Top 500 Jim Butcher Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “The Black Hole?” Grey asked, incredulously. “Nobody quotes The Black Hole, Dresden. Nobody even remembers that one.” “Hogwash. Ernest Borgnine, Anthony Perkins, and Roddy McDowall all in the same movie? Immortality.”

— Jim Butcher

202. “Money is a madness, a delusion-illusion. It’s not made of metal, really. It’s made of time. How much is one’s time worth? If one can convince enough people that one’s time is an invaluable resource, then one has lots and lots of money. That’s why one can spend time – only one can never get a refund.”

— Jim Butcher

203. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

204. “You suck. You suck diseased moose wang, Marcone.”

— Jim Butcher

205. “Belief in a story,” Uriel said, “of good confronting evil, of light overcoming darkness, of love transcending hate.” He tilted his head. “Isn’t that where all faith begins?”

— Jim Butcher

206. “False gods!” she cried, her blue eyes blazing as she stared at the Red King and the Lords of Outer Night. “Pretenders! Usurpers of truth! Destroyers of faith, of families, of lives, of children! For your crimes against the Mayans, against the peoples of the world, now will you answer! Your time has come! Face judgment Almighty!”

— Jim Butcher

207. “We all have our demons.”

— Jim Butcher

208. “Sheep can befriend a hungry wolf only for briefly.”

— Jim Butcher

209. “There was a ticking time bomb inside my head and the one person I trusted to go in and get it out hadn’t shown up or spoken to me for more than a year.”

— Jim Butcher

210. “Monsters don’t care,” Michael said. “The damned don’t care, Harry. The only way to go beyond redemption is to choose to take yourself there. The only way to do it is to stop caring.”

— Jim Butcher

211. “Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it’s a big part, and sometimes it isn’t, but either way, it’s part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you’re alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed.”

— Jim Butcher

212. “This is ridiculous. I look like the Games Workshop version of a Jedi Knight.”

— Jim Butcher

213. “Hands that wrap us in warmth, that hold us close. Hands that guide us to shelter, to comfort, to food. Hands that hold and touch and reassure us through our very first crisis, and guide us into our very first shelter from pain. The first thing we ever learn is that the touch of someone else’s hand can ease pain and make things better.”

— Jim Butcher

214. “Rule number one of the wizarding business. Never let them see you sweat. People expect us to know things. It can be a big advantage. Don’t screw it up by looking like you’re as confused as everyone else. Bad for the image.”

— Jim Butcher

215. “Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.”

— Jim Butcher

216. “Five white candles surrounded my summoning circle, the points of an invisible pentacle. White for protection. And because they’re the cheapest color at Wal-Mart.”

— Jim Butcher

217. “He’s Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket.”

— Jim Butcher

218. “Anger is my hiding place from fear, my shield and my sword against it. I.”

— Jim Butcher

219. “I am blind and limited. I would be a fool think myself wise. And so, not knowing what the universe means, I can only try to be responsible with the knowledge, the strength, and the time given to me. I must be true to my heart.”

— Jim Butcher

220. “Paranoia is a survival trait when you run in my circles. It gives you something to do in your spare time, coming up with solutions to ridiculous problems that aren’t ever going to happen. Except when one of them does, at which point you feel way too vindicated. – Harry Dresden, Changes, Jim Butcher.”

— Jim Butcher

221. “We’re ostriches and the whole world is sand.”

— Jim Butcher

222. “If you let fear start driving some of your decisions, sooner or later, it will drive them all.”

— Jim Butcher

223. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

224. “I told you long ago that being a real wizard means sacrifice. It means knowing things no one else does,” he said, still growling. “I told you that it meant that you might have to act upon what you knew, and knew to be right, even though the whole world set its hand against you. Or that you might have to do horrible, necessary things. Do you remember that?”

— Jim Butcher

225. “Lightning struck, a hawk cried in fury, and then a goddamned grizzly bear fell out of the night sky and onto Ethniu’s head. Don’t care how Titanic you are. No one expects an orbital-drop grizzly.”

— Jim Butcher

226. “Hers was a beauty so pure that it was nearly painful to behold – Athena heading out on a Friday night.”

— Jim Butcher

227. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

228. “You defy beings that should cow you into silence. You resist forces that are inevitable for no more reason than that you believe they should be resisted. You bow your head to neither demons nor angels, and you put yourself in harm’s way to defend those who cannot defend themselves.”

— Jim Butcher

229. “If you can’t stop the bad thoughts from coming to visit, at least you can make fun of them while they’re hanging around.”

— Jim Butcher

230. “Fading light means more than just the end of another day. Night is when terrible things emerge from their sleep and seek soft flesh and hot blood.”

— Jim Butcher

231. “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...”

— Jim Butcher

232. “Significance is cumulative – but not always obvious.”

— Jim Butcher

233. “Because a sound tree doesn’t have bad roots, Amara. No enterprise of greatness begins with treachery, with lying to the people who trust and love you.”

— Jim Butcher

234. “Spear and magic helmet,” I said in my best Elmer Fudd voice. “Be vewy, vewy quiet. We’re hunting vampires.”

— Jim Butcher

235. “Ah, yes, a savage. Of the famous Chromotonsorial Cahokian Goth tribe.”

— Jim Butcher

236. “All of those faeries and duels and mad queens and so on, and no one quoted old Billy Shakespeare. Not even once.”

— Jim Butcher

237. “Speed of lightning! Roar of thunder! Fighting all who rob or plunder! Underdog!”

— Jim Butcher

238. “I used the knife. I saved a child. I won a war. God forgive me.”

— Jim Butcher

239. “Knowledge counters fear. It always has.”

— Jim Butcher

240. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

241. “Make ready to repel boarders.”

— Jim Butcher

242. “The very sound of Creation still echoes throughout the vast darkness: The universe remembers.”

— Jim Butcher

243. “I brought the Beetle to life with a roar. Well. Not really a roar. A Volkswagen Bug doesn’t roar. But it sort of growled...”

— Jim Butcher

244. “Politics is the purview of scoundrels, tyrants, and fools.”

— Jim Butcher

245. “Death isn’t when your body stops working. It’s when there’s no more future. When you can’t see past right now, because you stopped believing in tomorrow.”

— Jim Butcher

246. “Names are unique sounds and cadences of words that are attached to one specific individual-sort of like a kind of theme music.”

— Jim Butcher

247. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

248. “My gast was pretty well flabbered.”

— Jim Butcher

249. “Plan B,” I said. “Okay, right. We need a plan B. If we only had a wheelbarrow, that would be something.” Susan let out a puff of laughter, and then I turned to her, my eyes alight. “We have a great big truck,” Susan said. “Then why didn’t you list that among our assets?” I said, in a bad British accent. “Go!” Susan vanished back down the.”

— Jim Butcher

250. “They say you can know a man by his enemies, Dresden.” He smiled, and laughter lurked beneath his next words, never quite surfacing. “You defy beings that should cow you into silence. You resist forces that are inevitable for no more reason than that you believe they should be resisted. You bow your head to neither demons nor angels, and you put yourself in harm’s way to defend those who cannot defend themselves.” He nodded slowly. “I think I like you.”

— Jim Butcher