Top 500 Jim Butcher Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “I listened. Listening isn’t hard to do. No one has practice at it, nowadays, but you can train yourself to pay attention to your senses if you work at it long enough.”

— Jim Butcher

402. “Bikers don’t wear all that leather around simply for the fashion value or possible felony assaults. It’s handy for keeping the highway from ripping the skin from your flesh should you wind up losing control of the bike and sliding along the asphalt for a while.”

— Jim Butcher

403. “Pretty please. With sugar.”

— Jim Butcher

404. “Rowl was not prepared to tolerate incompetence where his personal human was concerned. He had just gotten her properly trained.”

— Jim Butcher

405. “That’s so typical. You won’t steal a baby, but you’re too lazy to conjugate.”

— Jim Butcher

406. “It’s all right to be afraid. You just don’t let it stop you from doing your job.”

— Jim Butcher

407. “It wasn’t until later that I would realize that I was babbling a chant of “Ubriacha, ubrius, ubrium,” to the Peanuts theme music.”

— Jim Butcher

408. “Fear is a funny thing. In the right light, even tiny and insignificant fears can suddenly grow, swelling up to monstrous proportions.”

— Jim Butcher

409. “Life can be confusing. Good God, and how. Sometimes it seems like the older I get, the more confused I become. That seems ass-backwards. I thought I was supposed to be getting wiser. Instead, I just keep getting hit over the head with my relative insignificance in the greater scheme of the universe. Confusing, life. But it beats the hell out of the alternative.”

— Jim Butcher

410. “One rather thick volume was titled Means of Execution Through the Ages, and was placed with an elegant balance of nonchalance and availability at the eye level of anyone entering the room. As threats went, it was nearly subliminal – and perhaps it was placed there for that very reason.”

— Jim Butcher

411. “Fear has a lot of flavors and textures. There’s a sharp, silver fear that runs like lightning through your arms and legs, galvanizes you into action, power, motion. There’s heavy, leaden fear that comes in ingots, piling up in your belly during the empty hours between midnight and morning, when everything is dark, every problem grows larger, and every wound and illness grows worse.”

— Jim Butcher

412. “Harry Dresden Taxidermy. If you snuff it, we’ll stuff it.”

— Jim Butcher

413. “Intentions count for far less than the consequences of the actions born from them.”

— Jim Butcher

414. “Yeah, they look great, but that isn’t a fantasy come true, Harry. That’s a wood chipper in Playboy bunny clothing.”

— Jim Butcher

415. “I’d been in hairier situations than this one. Actually, it’s sort of depressing, thinking how many times I’d been in them. But if experience had taught me anything, it was this: No matter how screwed up things are, they can get a whole lot worse.”

— Jim Butcher

416. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

417. “My laboratory,” I said, experimentally, drawing out each syllable. “Why is it that saying it like that always makes me want to follow it with ‘mwoo-hah-hah-hah-hahhhhhh’?”

— Jim Butcher

418. “I mean, stars and stones. Two million bucks would buy you a lot of ramen.”

— Jim Butcher

419. “Oh, I forgot to mention it: My brother is the kind of man whom women stalk. In cooperative packs.”

— Jim Butcher

420. “It doesn’t take much power to hurt someone,” she said. “It’s far easier than healing the damage.”

— Jim Butcher

421. “Maybe this is what it feels like for civilians when they see cops doing some of the dirty work. A lot of times they don’t understand what’s happening. They see something they don’t like and it upsets them – because they don’t have the full story, aren’t personally facing the problem, and don’t know how much worse the alternative could be.”

— Jim Butcher

422. “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.”

— Jim Butcher

423. “I’ve always admired your ability to make jokes when faced with adversity.”

— Jim Butcher

424. “I’d gone with my usual option. I was running through long tunnels filled with demons and monsters and nightmares, because it was easier than going to the gym.”

— Jim Butcher

425. “Let’s get something clear up front. I’m not Harry Dresden. Harry’s a wizard. A genuine, honest-to-goodness wizard. He’s Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket. He’ll spit in the eye of gods and demons alike if he thinks it needs to be done, and to hell with the consequences – and yet somehow my little brother manages to remain a decent human being. I’ll be damned if I know how. But then, I’ll be damned regardless. My name is Thomas Raith, and I’m a monster.”

— Jim Butcher

426. “Faith in what?” “That things will unfold as they are meant to,” Forthill said. “That even in the face of an immediate ugliness, the greater picture will resolve into something all the more beautiful.”

— Jim Butcher

427. “It was worse than murder. It was twisted, wretched perversion, as though someone had bludgeoned another person to death with a Botticelli, turned something of beauty to an act of utter destruction.”

— Jim Butcher

428. “No one was standing in the shadows smoking a cigarette or looking about with a shifty-eyed gaze. I couldn’t see anyone quickly hiding a bloody knife behind his back or twirling a moustache, either. That ruled out the Dudley Do-Right approach to finding the killer.”

— Jim Butcher

429. “Your face looks like a sack of purple potatoes.”

— Jim Butcher

430. “He had hard, steady eyes, and all the comforting, reassuring charm of a dental drill. – Harry Dresden describing Morgan.”

— Jim Butcher

431. “My answer came out at once. For me, chivalry isn’t dead; it’s an involuntary reflex. It could have been any woman asking for help, and I’d have said the same thing. It might have taken me a second or two longer, but I would have. For Elaine, there was no need to think about it for even that long. “I’ll help.”

— Jim Butcher

432. “Mister went to his spot before the fireplace and demanded that it be made warm.”

— Jim Butcher

433. “Solution: Winchester.”

— Jim Butcher

434. “I pressed past the outer branches of the lilacs and found a small and relatively open space in the middle. Then I waited.”

— Jim Butcher

435. “Well,” Antillus Raucus said. “There it is.” “Brilliant last words,” Phrygius said beside him. “We’ll put them on your memorium. Right next to, ‘He died stating the obvious.’ ” “Ah,” Lord Placida said. “It begins.” “See?” Phrygius said. “Sandos knows how to go out with style.” “You want to go out with style, I’ll strangle you with your best silk tunic,” growled Antillus.”

— Jim Butcher

436. “In the action business, when you don’t want to say you ran like a mouse, you call it ‘taking cover.’ It’s more heroic.”

— Jim Butcher

437. “Here’s where I ask why don’t you spend your time doing something safer and more boring. Like maybe administering suppositories to rabid gorillas.”

— Jim Butcher

438. “Anger subsides. Love doesn’t.”

— Jim Butcher

439. “I witnessed the birth of time itself. I watched the mortal coil spring forth from perfect darkness. I watched the stars form, watched this world coalesce, watched as life was breathed into it and as your kind rose to rule it.” She put both hands on the table and leaned toward me, her blue eyes cold and hard. “Thus far, I have behaved as a guest ought. But do not mistake propriety for weakness, mortal. I beg you not to oblige me to take further action.”

— Jim Butcher

440. “Hey. I don’t care what kind of faerie or mortal or hideous creature you are. If you’ve got danglies and can lose them, that’s the kind of sight that make you reconsider the possible genitalia-related ramifications of your actions real damned quick.”

— Jim Butcher

441. “Chili dogs, funnel cakes, fried bread, majorly greasy pizza, candy apples, ye gods. Evil food smells amazing – which is either proof that there is a Satan or some equivalent out there, or that the Almighty doesn’t actually want everyone to eat organic tofu all the time. I can’t decide.”

— Jim Butcher

442. “The only people who never hurt are dead.”

— Jim Butcher

443. “This is what it look like when it WORKS?”

— Jim Butcher

444. “You can use just about anything to make a magic circle, but salt is often the most practical. It’s a symbol of the earth and of purity, and it doesn’t draw ants. You use sugar to make a circle on the carpet only once. Let me tell you.”

— Jim Butcher

445. “And besides, she was curious. She had questions. And answering questions was very nearly always more important than caution.”

— Jim Butcher

446. “You’re dead, son. Cheer is contraindicated.”

— Jim Butcher

447. “If the Eagle Scouts had some sort of Sith equivalent, Marcone was it.”

— Jim Butcher

448. “You’d think as long as I was gambling with my soul, I would have thought to get Mab to throw in fifty bucks an hour plus expenses.”

— Jim Butcher

449. “I parked in front of the Field Museum under a NO PARKING sign. There were a couple of actual spots I could have used, but the drive was even closer. Besides, I found it aesthetically satisfying to defy municipal code.”

— Jim Butcher

450. “The Denarians want to disrupt civilization, and with the Archive under their control, they could do it. Maybe they’d use biological or chemical weapons instead. Maybe they’d crash the world economy. Maybe they’d turn every program on television into one of those reality shows.” “That’s mostly done already, Harry.”

— Jim Butcher