Top 500 Jim Butcher Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Like “love,” “hope” is one of those ridiculously disproportional words that by all rights should be a lot longer.”

— Jim Butcher

102. “Heroism doesn’t pay very well. I try to be cold-blooded and money-oriented, but I keep screwing it up.”

— Jim Butcher

103. “How do i do this?”

— Jim Butcher

104. “The last time I was at a supernatural shindig, I got poisoned and then everything there tried to kill me. So I burned the whole place to the ground.”

— Jim Butcher

105. “My choices are measured against my own soul. Not against the stains on theirs.”

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

109. “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

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

— Jim Butcher

111. “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

112. “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

113. “Children are a precious gift, but they belong to no one but themselves. They are only lent us a little while.”

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

116. “Ha-ha! Ah-hahahaha! I am wizard; hear me roar!”

— Jim Butcher

117. “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

118. “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

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

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

122. “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

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

— Jim Butcher

124. “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

125. “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

126. “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

127. “Keep it up, wise guy. I’m always going to be taller than you once you’re lying unconscious on the ground.”

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

129. “Likest thou jelly within thy doughnut?”

— Jim Butcher

130. “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

131. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

132. “Better safe than exsanguinated.”

— Jim Butcher

133. “God save me from idealists.”

— Jim Butcher

134. “Bring it, Darth Bathrobe!”

— Jim Butcher

135. “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

136. “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

137. “You can’t abandon life just because it’s scary, and just because you get hurt.”

— Jim Butcher

138. “Those who had never seen a tribe of cats at war, or at least playing war games, would look upon what came next as utter chaos.”

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

140. “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

141. “Harry, that’s not a plan, it’s a Looney Tune.”

— Jim Butcher

142. “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

143. “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

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

— Jim Butcher

145. “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

146. “As a race, we’re an enormous bunch of idiots. We’re more than capable of ignoring facts if the conclusions they lead to make us too uncomfortable. Or afraid.”

— Jim Butcher

147. “The only good thing about having your back to the wall is that it makes it really easy to choose which way you’re going to go.”

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

149. “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

150. “I’m not exactly a useless cream puff.”

— Jim Butcher