There should be a rule against your own inner monologue throwing around that much sarcasm.
The married thing. Sometimes I look at it and feel like someone from a Dickens novel, standing outside in the cold and staring in at Christmas dinner. Relationships hadn't ever really worked for me. I think it's had something to do with all the demons, ghosts, and human sacrifice.
As a whole, people suck. But a person can be extraordinary
Something like this will test you like nothing else," Mac said. "You're going to find out who you are, Harry. You're going to find out which principles you'll stand by to your death--and which lines you'll cross." He took my empty glass away and said, "You're heading into the badlands. It'll be easy to get lost.
I'd made the vampire cry. Great. I felt like a real superhero. Harry Dresden, breaker of monsters' hearts.
I'm pretty sure lurking in a dark alley to mug me with your apology isn't the usual way to go about saying you're sorry. But I didn't read that Mars-Venus book, so who knows.
Nearly everyone underestimates how powerful the touch of another person's hand can be. The need to be touched is something so primal, so fundamentally a part of our existence as human beings that its true impact upon us can be difficult to put into words. That power doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex, either. From the time we are infants, we learn to associate the touch of a human hand with safety, with comfort, with love.
There're things we keep hidden from one another. Things we hide from ourselves. Things that are kept hidden from us. And things no one knows. You always learn the damnedest things at the worst possible times.
Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.
Anger is just anger. It isn't good. It isn't bad. It just is. What you do with it is what matters. It's like anything else. You can use it to build or to destroy. You just have to make the choice.
Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land.
We've both got into the blue beetle. He got into the red door, I got into the white one.
I don't know about your true form, but the weight of your ego sure is pushing the crust of the earth toward the breaking point.
There's always, always a choice. My options might really, truly suck, but that doesn't mean there isn't a choice.
Regardless of what I think about Islam or Wicca or any other religion, the fact is that it's a group of people. Every faith has its ceremonies. And since it's made up of people, every faith also has its assholes.
Worry is fear in disguise. And fear will eat you from the inside out if you let it.
Kids. You gotta love them. I adore children. A little salt, a squeeze of lemon--perfect.
I've always felt that the best whips and chains are in the mind. With a little creativity, the physical ones are hardly necessary.
People love dogs. You can never go wrong adding a dog to the story.
Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others-- even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.
Laughter, like love, has power to survive the worst things life has to offer. And to do it with style.
A pure heart and mind only takes you so far - sooner or later the hormones have their say, too.
The impossible we do immediately. The unimaginable takes a little while.
What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?
There is a primal reassurance in being touched, in knowing that someone else, someone close to you, wants to be touching you. There is a bone-deep security that goes with the brush of a human hand, a silent, reflex-level affirmation that someone is near, that someone cares.
Even in winter, the cold isn't always bitter, and not every day is cruel.
Oh, what would you like on your vegetarian pizza?" "Dead pigs and cows," I said. She glanced up at me and wrinkled her nose. "They're vegetarians," I said defensively.
Hope is a force of nature. Don't let anyone tell you different.
I felt my face stretch in a victorious smile. The potion had worked. I was inside. I had to suppress an urge to break into a soft shoe routine. Sometimes being able to use magic was so cool.
Whatever you do, do it for love. If you keep to that, your path will never wander so far from the light that you can never return.
Love is patient. Love is kind. Love always forgives, trusts, supports, and endures. Love never fails. When every star in the heavens grows cold, and when silence lies once more on the face of the deep, three things will endure: faith, hope, and love.
Maybe my values are outdated, but I come from an old school of thought. I think that men ought to treat women like something other than just shorter, weaker men with breasts. Try and convict me if I’m a bad person for thinking so. I enjoy treating a woman like a lady, opening doors for her, paying for shared meals, giving flowers–all that sort of thing.
I didn't know this before, but as it turns out, Tyrannosaurs can really haul ass.
Every soul is special. They’re all beautiful. They’re all far more significant than anyone on this rock realizes. I think when people are at their best, they’re acting in accordance with their soul. The ones who have gone bad don’t have bad souls. They’ve just given up on keeping in touch with them.
Life is too short, Harry. And there's nowhere near enough joy in it. If you find it, grab it. Before it's gone.
We are not going to die." Butters stared up at me, pale, his eyes terrified. "We're not?" No. And do you know why?" He shook his head. "Because Thomas is too pretty to die. And because I'm too stubborn to die." I hauled on the shirt even harder. "And most of all because tomorrow is Oktoberfest, Butters, and polka will never die.
Sometimes I hate having a conscience, and a stupidly thorough sense of honor.
There's power in the night. There's terror in the darkness. Despite all our accumulated history, learning, and experience, we remember. We remember times when we were too small to reach the light switch on the wall, and when darkness itself was enough to make us cry out in fear.
My magic. That was at the heart of me. It was a manifestation of what I believed, what I lived. It came from my desire to see to it that someone stood between the darkness and the people it would devour.
He's Black Council," I said. "Or maybe stupid," Ebenezar countered. I thought about it. "Not sure which is scarier." Ebenezar blinked at me, then snorted. "Stupid, Hoss. Every time. Only so many blackhearted villains in the world, and they only get uppity on occasion. Stupid's everywhere, every day.
When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching - they are your family.
I choose my battles, Dresden. Not you." She looked up at me calmly. "Let me put this in terms that will get through your skull: My friend is going to save a child from monsters. I'm going with him. That's what friends do, Harry.
When I'm in turmoil, when I can't think, when I'm exhausted and afraid and feeling very, very alone, I go for walks. It's just one of those things I do. I walk and I walk and sooner or later something comes to me, something to make me feel less like jumping off a building.
In the name of the Pizza Lord. Charge!
Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don't want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether.
I ask people impertinent questions. Hopefully turning up pertinent answers.
Magic comes from what is inside you. It is a part of you. You can't weave together a spell that you don't beleive in.
Fear is a part of life. It's a warning mechanism. That's all. It tells you when there's danger around. Its job is to help you survive. Not cripple you into being unable to do it.
I died. I died and someone made a clerical error and I am in Heaven.
Jobs are a part of life. Maybe you've heard of the concept. It's called work? See, what happens is that you suffer through doing annoying and humiliating things until you get paid not enough money. Like those Japanese game shows, only without all the glory.
Mister Dresden," he said. "And Miss Rodriguez, I believe. I didn't realize you were an art collector." "I am the foremost collector of velvet Elvii in the city of Chicago," I said at once. "Elvii?" Marcone inquired. "The plural could be Elvises, I guess," I said. "But if I say that too often, I start muttering to myself and calling things 'my precious,' so I usually go with the Latin plural.
HARRY DRESDEN—WIZARD Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or Other Entertainment
You're in America now," I said. "Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.
The movie of my life must be really low budget.
If your opponent has you by fifty pounds, winning a fight against him is a dubious proposition, at best. If your opponent has you by eight thousand and fifty pounds, you’ve left the realm of combat and enrolled yourself in Road-kill 101. Or possibly in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
Love is another kind of power, which shouldn't surprise you. Magic comes from emotions, among other things. And when two people are together, in that intimacy, when they really, selflessly love each other it changes them both. It lingers on in the energy of their lives, even when they are apart.
He's Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket.
I know it's not thematically in tune with my new job and all, but I find it effective. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day," I say. "But set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. Tao of Pratchett. I live by it.
Whenever it gets too dark, think of the good things you have, the good times you've had. It will help. I promise.
A man's magic demonstrates what sort of person he is, what is held most deeply inside of him. There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power. I was not a murderer. I was not like Victor Sells. I was Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. I was a wizard. Wizards control their power. They don't let it control them. And wizards don't use magic to kill people. They use it to discover, to protect, to mend, to help. Not to destroy.
Sleep is God. Go worship.
Just because you start out as one thing, it doesn't mean you can't grow into something else.
Alone. It's one of those small words that means entirely too much. Like fear. Or trust.
It turns out that Molly wasn't her mother's daughter in that respect. Charity was like the MacGuyver of the kitchen. She could whip up a five-course meal for twelve from an egg, two spaghetti noodles, some household chemicals, and a stick of chewing gum. Molly ... Molly once burned my egg. My boiled egg. I don't know how.
Yeah, but I forgot to take my George Orwell-shaped multivitamins along with my breakfast bowl of Big Brother Os this morning.
Rest. Heal. Sleep. I shall most likely kill you on the morrow.” “You? A Princess Bride quote?” I croaked. “What is that?” she asked.
Sticks and stones may break your bones, but Chinese throwing stars get you a dozen stitches.
I've been a young man. Boobs are near the center of the universe, until you turn twenty-five or so. Which is also when young men's auto insurance rates go down. This is not a coincidence.
You know how confusing the whole good-evil concept is for me.
The human mind isn't a terribly logical or consistent place. Most people, given the choice to face a hideous or terrifying truth or to conveniently avoid it, choose the convenience and peace of normality. That doesn't make them strong or weak people, or good or bad people. It just makes them people.
Pain is to be endured. It ends or it does not.
The cold rain came down in buckets. I was shaking, shivering, and naked, and more soap was getting into my eyes. But hey. At least I was clean.
We all must die. There is no better way to do so than in the pursuit of something you love.
Sometimes the only way to carry a heavy burden is to share it with another
Passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves. Passion has brought justice where there was savagery. Passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear. Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, stronger, more beautiful.
There is the world that should be and the world that is. We live in one and must create the other.
But there were some things I believed in. Some things I had faith in. And faith isn't about perfect attendance to services, or how much money you put on the little plate. It isn't about going skyclad to the Holy Rites, or meditating each day upon the divine. Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others - even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.
No rest for the wicked, Bob, and that means that we can't slack off either, or they'll outwork us.
She studied my face for a long minute. "Are you going to help my mom?" It was a simple question. But how do you tell a child that things just aren't that simple, that some questions don't have simple answers--or any answer at all?
Whenever you've got a choice, do good, kiddo. It isn't always fun or easy, but in the long run it makes your life better.
Sometimes I think that's where most of us are. Fighting off the crazy as best we can. Trying to become something better than we were. It's that second bit that's important.
If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt.
Honest. It's almost always best to go with honest. It means you never have to worry about getting your story straight.
Caring about someone isn't complicated. It isn't easy. But it isn't complicated, either. Kinda like lifting the engine block out of a car.
If you make some comment even obliquely alluding to menstruation or menopause and its effect on my judgment," Murphy interrupted, "I will break your arm in eleven places.
Sticks and stones and small caliber bullets may break my bones... Words will never, et cetera.
The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.
And I knew that there was some dark corner of me that would enjoy using magic for killing—and then long for more. That was black magic, and it was easy to use. Easy and fun. Like Legos
All things pass in time. We are far less significant than we imagine ourselves to be. All that we are, all that we have wrought, is but a shadow, no matter how durable it may seem. One day, when the last man has breathed his last breath, the sun will shine, the mountains will stand, the rain will fall, the streams will whisper—and they will not miss him.
There's more magic in a baby's first giggle than in any firestorm a wizard can conjure up, and don't let anyone tell you any different.
Fear is bred from ignorance. So knowledge is a weapon against it, and reason is the tool of knowledge.
Life is full of toil, sacrifice, and pain, and from the time we stop growing, we know that we've begun dying. We watch helplessly as year by year, our bodies age and fail, while our survival instincts compel us to keep on going-which means living with the terrifying knowledge that ultimately death is inescapable.
It isn't enough to stand up and fight darkness. You've got to stand apart from it, too. You've got to be different from it.
Karrin, eh?" Thomas asked. I nodded. "She's real serious about order. A man dying, she can understand. A man coming back. That's different." "Isn't she Catholic?" Thomas asked. "Don't they have a guy?
Most of the bad guys in the real world don't know that they are bad guys. You don't get a flashing warning sign that you're about to damn yourself. It sneaks up on you when you aren't looking.
Have you ever felt despair? Absolute hopelessness? Have you ever stood in the darkness and known, deep in your heart, in your spirit, that it was never, ever going to get better? That something had been lost, forever, and that it wasn't coming back?
The fire of my tribulations had not simply been pain to be endured. It had been an agent of transformation. After all that I'd been through, I'd changed. Not for the worse, I was pretty sure--at least not yet. But only a moron or a freaking lunatic could have faced the things I had and remained unfazed by them.
Fire isn't always an element of destruction. Classical alchemical doctrine teaches that it also has dominion over another province: change.
I don't have anything against God. Far from it. But I don't understand Him. And I don't trust a lot of the people that go around claiming that they're working in His best interests. Faeries and vampires and whatnot -- those I can fathom. Even demons. Sometimes, even the Fallen. I can understand why they do what they do. But I don't understand God. I don't understand how he could see the way people treat one another, and not chalk up the whole human race as a bad idea
Karrin Murphy led the charge, and Sanya and I tried to keep up. She went through that sea of foes like a little speedboat, her enemies spun and tossed and turned and disoriented in her wake. Sanya and I hacked our way through stunned foes, pushing and chopping with unsophisticated brutality-and that big Russian lunatic just kept laughing the whole time.
My hair had grown out long and shaggy—not in that sexy-young-rock-star kind of way but in that time-to-take-Rover-to-the-groomer kind of way.
Heroism doesn't pay very well. I try to be cold-blooded and money-oriented, but I keep screwing it up.
Likest thou jelly within thy doughnut?
Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.
Survival was not enough. One had to live.
Now I feel like James Bond. Suave and intelligent, breaking all the codes while looking fabulous.
Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.
We have now left Reason and Sanity Junction. Next stop, Looneyville.
Because nothing says flattery like a gun to the head.
You don't go walking into the proverbial lion's den lightly. You start with a good breakfast.
Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar
Do you want your blood to stay where it is sochar-lar?" Tavi lifted both eyebrows at the unfamiliar word, and glanced at Varg. "Monkey," Varg supplied, in Aleran. "And male-child." "He called me monkey boy?" Tavi asked.
Knowledge is the ultimate weapon. It always has been.
Growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something.
God isn't about making good things happen to you, or bad things happen to you. He's all about you making choices--exercising the gift of free will. God wants you to have good things and a good life, but He won't gift wrap them for you. You have to choose the actions that lead you to that life.
You don't take your cat with you to go bird shopping. Not because the cat isn't polite, but because he's a cat.
Loneliness is a hard thing to handle. I feel it, sometimes. When I do, I want it to end. Sometimes, when you're near someone, when you touch them on some level that is deeper than the uselessly structured formality of casual civilized interaction, there's a sense of satisfaction in it. Or at least, there is for me. It doesn't have to be someone particularly nice. You don't have to like them. You don't even have to want to work with them. You might even want to punch them in the nose. Sometimes just making that connection is its own experience, its own reward.
Life would be unbearably dull if we had answers to all our questions.
Like “love,” “hope” is one of those ridiculously disproportional words that by all rights should be a lot longer.
There are bad things in the world. There's no getting away from that. But that doesn't mean nothing can be done about them. You can't abandon life just because it's scary, and just because sometimes you get hurt.
Courage is about learning how to function despite the fear, to put aside your instincts to run or give in completely to the anger born from fear. Courage is about using your brain and your heart when every cell of your body is screaming at your to fight or flee - and then following through on what you believe is the right thing to do.
I had to smile at the man. I mean, you have to smile at idiots and children.
Tavi grinned. "Are you with me?" "The plan is insane," Ehren said. "YOU are insane." He looked around the inside of the tent. "I'll need some pants.
So we get a plan," I said. "Any suggestions?" "Blow up the building," Kincaid said without looking up. "That works good for vampires. Then soak what's left in gasoline. Set it on fire. Then blow it all up again." "For future reference, I was sort of hoping for a suggestion that didn't sound like it came from that Bolshevik Muppet with all the dynamite.
There is, I think, humor here which does not translate well from English into sanity.
