Top 500 Jim Butcher Quotes (2025 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. “It’s all right to be afraid. You just don’t let it stop you from doing your job.”

— 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 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

407. “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

408. “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

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

— Jim Butcher

410. “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

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

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

413. “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

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

— Jim Butcher

415. “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

416. “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

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

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

419. “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

420. “In for a sheep, in for a gargant.”

— Jim Butcher

421. “Sometimes, Hoss,” he said very gently, “you lose. Sometimes the darkness takes everyone. Sometimes the monster escapes to kill again another day.” He shook his head and looked down. “Sometimes, Hoss, the innocent little ones are murdered. And there’s not one goddamned thing you can do about it.”

— Jim Butcher

422. “The Shroud was old, and regarded as special, and people believed in it. That could be enough to give it a kind of power, all by itself.”

— Jim Butcher

423. “Scars – the graffiti of violence. – Harry Dresden.”

— Jim Butcher

424. “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

425. “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

426. “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

427. “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

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

— Jim Butcher

429. “Solution: Winchester.”

— Jim Butcher

430. “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

431. “Anger subsides. Love doesn’t.”

— Jim Butcher

432. “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

433. “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

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

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

436. “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

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

— Jim Butcher

438. “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

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

— Jim Butcher

440. “Let me be clear that I never offered House Astor an insult... Nor did I insult Reginald. I simply described him in accurate terms. If he finds himself insulted by the truth, it’s hardly my concern.”

— Jim Butcher

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

— Jim Butcher

442. “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

443. “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

444. “Hell’s Bells-Harry Dresden.”

— Jim Butcher

445. “Thomas was an annoying wiseass who tended to make everyone he met want to kill him, and when I have that much in common with someone, I can’t help but like him a little.”

— Jim Butcher

446. “You don’t gain knowledge without a little pain.”

— Jim Butcher

447. “It isn’t complicated. You just open up and let someone in. And whatever comes after that, you face it together.”

— Jim Butcher

448. “What do you do to make up for failing everyone in your life? How do you make it right? How do you apologize for hideous things you never intended to happen?”

— Jim Butcher

449. “I can’t tell you how many jobs I’ve done without a hitch since the last time I saw you, Dresden. You walk through the door and everything goes to hell.” “That’s embroidered on my towels, actually,” I said.”

— Jim Butcher

450. “See, here’s the thing. Morgan was right: you can’t win them all. But that doesn’t mean that you give up. Not ever. Morgan never said that part – he was too busy living it.”

— Jim Butcher