Top 500 Jim Butcher Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “My choices are measured against my own soul. Not against the stains on theirs.”

— Jim Butcher

102. “Honest. It’s almost always best to go with honest. It means you never have to worry about getting your story straight.”

— Jim Butcher

103. “I’ve always admired your ability to be unilaterally irritating.”

— Jim Butcher

104. “Harry Dresden, Winter Knight, Targets Slain, No Barbecues, Waterslides, or Fireworks Displays.”

— Jim Butcher

105. “It came charging toward me, several hundred pounds of angry-looking monster, and I did the only thing any reasonable wizard could have done. I turned around and ran like hell.”

— Jim Butcher

106. “Light shines brightest in the deepest dark!”

— Jim Butcher

107. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

108. “Pain is a byproduct of life. That’s the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That’s true for everyone. But if you don’t face the pain and the suck, you don’t ever get the other things either. Laughter. Joy. Love. Pain passes, but those things are worth fighting for. Worth dying for.”

— Jim Butcher

109. “What goes around comes around. And sometimes you get what’s coming around.” He paused for a moment, frowning faintly, pursing his lips. “And sometimes you are what’s coming around. You see what I mean?”

— Jim Butcher

110. “Of course Evil’s afoot. If it had switched to the metric system it’d be up to a meter by now.”

— Jim Butcher

111. “Men plan. Fate Laughs. Guis Alera, First Lord.”

— Jim Butcher

112. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

113. “Fox and Scorpion came to a brook,” Mab murmured, her voice low, sweet. “Wide was the water. Scorpion asked Fox for a ride on his back. Fox said, ‘Scorpion, will you not sting me?’ Scorpion said, ‘If I did, it would mean the death of us both.’ Fox agreed, and Scorpion climbed onto his back. Fox swam, but halfway over, Scorpion struck with his deadly sting. Fox gasped, ‘Fool, you have doomed us both. Why?’ ‘I am a scorpion,’ said Scorpion. ‘It is my nature.”

— Jim Butcher

114. “A little humiliation and ego deflation, now and then, is good for apprentices. Mine sighed miserably.”

— Jim Butcher

115. “MY NAME IS Mouse and I am a Good Dog. Everyone says so.”

— Jim Butcher

116. “Sullen monosyllabism, a sure sign of sleep deprivation.”

— Jim Butcher

117. “I will make Maggie safe. If the world burns because of that then so be it. Me and the kid will roast some marshmallows.”

— Jim Butcher

118. “In the name of the Pizza Lord. Charge!”

— Jim Butcher

119. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

120. “No one is an unjust villain in his own mind. Even – perhaps even especially those who are the worst of us. Some of the cruelest tyrants in history were motivated by noble ideals, or made choices they would call “hard but necessary” for the good of their nation. We’re all the hero of our own story.”

— Jim Butcher

121. “I once lost five years listening to a Pink Floyd album.”

— Jim Butcher

122. “The best way to keep yourself from doing something grossly self-destructive and stupid is to avoid the temptation to do it. For example, it is far easier to fend off inappropriate amorous desires if one runs screaming from the room every time a pretty girl comes in.”

— Jim Butcher

123. “Likest thou jelly within thy doughnut?”

— Jim Butcher

124. “The world is getting weirder. Darker every single day. Things are spinning around faster and faster, and threatening to go completely awry. Falcons and falconers. The center cannot hold.”

— Jim Butcher

125. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

126. “Better safe than exsanguinated.”

— Jim Butcher

127. “God save me from idealists.”

— Jim Butcher

128. “Body or mind, heart or soul, we’re all human, and we’re supposed to feel pain. You cut yourself off from it at your own risk.”

— Jim Butcher

129. “Bring it, Darth Bathrobe!”

— Jim Butcher

130. “We’re all of us equally naked before the jaws of pain.”

— Jim Butcher

131. “Murphy hung up and I said, to the still-open line, “Hey, if you’ve got someone watching my place, could you call the cops if anyone tries to steal my Star Wars poster? It’s an original.” Then I vindictively hung up on the FBI. It made my inner child happy.”

— Jim Butcher

132. “That was silly, to think that they would not love each other – but sometimes humans are slow to figure things out, because they are heart-stupid. You are, too. That’s okay. Just get a dog. Dogs can teach you all kinds of things about your heart.”

— Jim Butcher

133. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

134. “Yeah, but I forgot to take my George Orwell-shaped multivitamins along with my breakfast bowl of Big Brother Os this morning.”

— Jim Butcher

135. “Doroga thumped a finger against his skull. Head got nothing to do with the heart. Your heart wants what it wants. Head got to learn that it can only kill the heart or else get out of the way.”

— Jim Butcher

136. “A good man, almost by definition, would seriously question any decisions he made that led to such terrible consequences for others. Especially if those others trusted him.”

— Jim Butcher

137. “I’ll be patient,” I said. “But not forever.”

— Jim Butcher

138. “The best thing about my faerie godmother is that the creepy just keeps on coming.”

— Jim Butcher

139. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

140. “Compartmentalize and conquer.”

— Jim Butcher

141. “In my judgment, my buildings are less likely to burn to the ground during one of your visits if you are disoriented from being treated like a sultan.”

— Jim Butcher

142. “Just because you start out as one thing, it doesn’t mean you can’t grow into something else.”

— Jim Butcher

143. “His mind is strange,” came Varg’s rumbling voice, “but capable.”

— Jim Butcher

144. “Man sees faces. Sees skin. Flags. Membership lists. Files. God sees hearts.”

— Jim Butcher

145. “You are a rare kind of crazy, man.”

— Jim Butcher

146. “I hate dreams like this,” I said. “There’s no plot – just random weird things happening. I get enough of that when I’m awake.”

— Jim Butcher

147. “There are people out there who enjoy hurting and scaring others. They’re going to keep doing it until you make them stop.”

— Jim Butcher

148. “No story that juicy was going to stay secret for long.”

— Jim Butcher

149. “Night wasn’t so much falling as sharpening its claws.”

— Jim Butcher

150. “There’s always, always a choice. My options might really, truly suck, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a choice.”

— Jim Butcher