Top 500 Jim Butcher Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “No rest for the wicked, Bob, and that means that we can’t slack off either, or they’ll outwork us.”

— Jim Butcher

252. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

253. “Death is as light as a feather, duty heavier than a spire.”

— Jim Butcher

254. “At the moment I was mad enough to chew up nails and spit out paper clips.”

— Jim Butcher

255. “Sometimes I hate having a conscience, and a stupidly thorough sense of honor.”

— Jim Butcher

256. “Mortimer Lindquist seemed to have finally given in to the inevitable. I’d seen him with a bad toupee, and with an even worse comb-over, but this was the first time I’d seen him sporting a full-on Charles Xavier.”

— Jim Butcher

257. “Polka will never die!” Butters screamed. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Thomas muttered.”

— Jim Butcher

258. “Don’t call me a dinosaur. It isn’t fair to the dinosaurs. What did a dinosaur ever do to you?”

— Jim Butcher

259. “Because Thomas is too pretty to die. And because I’m too stubborn to die. And most of all because tomorrow is Oktoberfest, Butters, and polka will never die.”

— Jim Butcher

260. “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. Magic comes from what is inside you. It is a part of you. You can’t weave together a spell that you don’t believe in.”

— Jim Butcher

261. “There’s always a choice,” I said. “That’s the thing, man. There’s always, always a choice. My options might really, truly suck, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a choice.”

— Jim Butcher

262. “I think that men ought to treat women like something other than weaker men with breasts.”

— Jim Butcher

263. “I didn’t follow her right away. She didn’t look back. Stab. Twist. God, I love being a wizard.”

— Jim Butcher

264. “Behold the angry wizard puttputt-putting away. My.”

— Jim Butcher

265. “I remember very little of my father, but one thing I do remember is him telling me always to be polite. It costs you nothing but breath, and can buy you as much as your life.”

— Jim Butcher

266. “If I lived through the next day or so, I needed to start keeping track of where these jokers liked to get their bloodthirsty freak on. It might give me an edge someday. Or at least a list of places that could use a nice burning down. I hadn’t burned down a building in ages.”

— Jim Butcher

267. “My own aches and bruises and cuts and wounds pained me, but it was an honest, stretchy pain, something that was healing.”

— Jim Butcher

268. “You don’t go walking into the proverbial lion’s den lightly. You start with a good breakfast.”

— Jim Butcher

269. “I hope you’re one of the good guys, Mr. Dresden. We really need a good guy. I.”

— Jim Butcher

270. “I do business with many people over the course of centuries, and treachery is a bad long-term investment. It simply isn’t good business.”

— Jim Butcher

271. “Love is another kind of power, which shouldn’t surprise you. Magic comes from emotions, among other things.”

— Jim Butcher

272. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

273. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of trauma, I will fear no concussion.”

— Jim Butcher

274. “Ease off the martyr throttle.”

— Jim Butcher

275. “It isn’t about being fair and equal. It’s about the difference between right and wrong.” He stared out at the bloody Elinarch. “And this was wrong.”

— Jim Butcher

276. “Bridget blinked once. “Books do not have souls, sir.” “Those who write them do,” Ferus said. “They leave bits and pieces behind them when they lay down the words, some scraps and smears of their essential nature.” He sniffed. “Most untidy, really – but assemble enough scraps and one might have something approaching a whole.” “You believe that the library has a soul,” Bridget said carefully. “I do not believe it, young lady,” Ferus said rather stiffly. “I know it.”

— Jim Butcher

277. “That’s the true power of a wizard. I know things. Knowledge is power. With power comes responsibility.”

— Jim Butcher

278. “More than that, though, it gained a definite spiritual chill. Malevolent energy hovered around us, slow and thick like half-frozen honey. There was a gloating, miserly quality to it, bringing to my mind images of old Smaug lying in covetous slumber upon his bed of treasure.”

— Jim Butcher

279. “You never get a straight answer from captains. You should know that by now.”

— Jim Butcher

280. “I’ve never lost a duel to the death. Not one.”

— Jim Butcher

281. “Put some clothes on, you weird, yellow-eyed, table-dancing, werewolf-training, cryptic, stare-me-right-in-the-eyes-and-don’t-even-blink wench.”

— Jim Butcher

282. “There are moments in your life that, when you look back at them, you realize were perfect. A hundred million things had to happen, to all come together at the same time, for such moments to come into existence – so many things that it beggars imagination to think that they could possibly have happened by random chance. This was one of them.”

— Jim Butcher

283. “Lies. Mab cannot change who you are.”

— Jim Butcher

284. “Fighting is never good. But sometimes necessary.”

— Jim Butcher

285. “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

— Jim Butcher

286. “I had time to think, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to.”

— Jim Butcher

287. “Three blind men were shown an elephant. They touched it with their hands to determine what the creature was. The first man felt the trunk, and claimed that an elephant was like a snake. The second man touched its leg and claimed that an elephant was like a tree. The third man touched its tail, and claimed that the elephant was like a slender rope.”

— Jim Butcher

288. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

289. “I know. It makes my head hurt too.”

— Jim Butcher

290. “So there I was being strangled by a ranting, half-naked madman in the middle of the woods, with a she-werewolf dangling from a rope snare somewhere nearby.”

— Jim Butcher

291. “What one deserves and what one experiences are seldom congruent.”

— Jim Butcher

292. “I died. I died and someone made a clerical error and I am in Heaven.”

— Jim Butcher

293. “Butters’s voice turned bitter. “Them or us, choose a side?” “It’s not about taking sides,” Karrin said. “It’s about knowing yourself. About understanding why you make the choices you do. Once you know that, you know where to walk, too.”

— Jim Butcher

294. “There are people who love you, Faith. Or who one day will. Even if you can’t see them beside you, right here, right now, they’re out there. But if you let the dark get into your eyes, you might never find them. So it’s best to keep a little light with you, along the way.”

— Jim Butcher

295. “So, ladies, if you ever have some conversation with your boyfriend or husband or brother or male friend, and you are telling him something perfectly obvious, and he comes away from it utterly clueless? I know it’s tempting to think to yourself, “The man can’t possibly be that stupid!” But yes. Yes, he can.”

— Jim Butcher

296. “Raw power doesn’t determine all that you can do with magic. Focus matters, too. The better your focus is, the better you are at putting your power in one place at the same time, the more you can get done.”

— Jim Butcher

297. “Hell’s bells, irony blows.”

— Jim Butcher

298. “There is no truer gauge of a man’s character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power.”

— Jim Butcher

299. “Here had lived someone else who knew that the only thing waiting at home was a sense of loneliness. Sometimes it is comforting. Most often, it isn’t.”

— Jim Butcher

300. “Investigate the faeries. Great. That was absolutely guaranteed to get complicated before I got any useful answers. If there was one thing faeries hated doing, it was giving you a straight answer, about anything. Getting plain speech out out of one is like pulling out teeth. Your own teeth. Through your nose.”

— Jim Butcher