Quotes from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“People have far more power than they realize, if they would only choose to use it.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“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, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“I felt like I had just double-tapped Santa.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“I grunted. It's something I picked up over a fifteen-year career in law enforcement. Men have managed to create a complex and utterly impenetrable secret language consisting of monosyllabic sounds and partial words—and they are apparently too thick to realize it exists. Maybe they really are from Mars. I'd been able to learn a few Martian phrases over time, and one of the useful ones was the grunt that meant "I acknowledge that I've heard what you said; please continue.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“Whenever it gets too dark, think of the good things you have, the good times you've had. It will help. I promise.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“It doesn't make you a monster to want, she said, her voice very gentle. It's what you do with it that matters.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“There was a click of high heels in the hall behind us, and a young woman appeared. She was pretty enough, I suspected, but in the tight black dress, black hose, and with her hair slicked back like that, it was sort of threatening. She gave me a slow, cold look and said, "So. I see that you’re keeping low company after all, Ravenius."
Ever suave, I replied, "Uh. What?"
"’Ah-ree," Thomas said.
I glanced at him.
He put his hand flat on the top of his head and said, "Do this."
I peered at him.
He gave me a look.
I sighed and put my hand on the top of my head.
The girl in the black dress promptly did the same thing and gave me a smile. "Oh, right, sorry. I didn’t realize."
"I will be back in one moment," Thomas said, his accent back. "Personal business."
"Right," she said, "sorry. I figured Ennui had stumbled onto a subplot." She smiled again, then took her hand off the top of her head, reassumed that cold, haughty expression, and stalked clickety-clack back to the bistro.
I watched her go, turned to my brother while we both stood there with our hands flat on top of our heads, elbows sticking out like chicken wings, and said, "What does this mean?"
"We’re out of character," Thomas said.
"Oh," I said. "And not a subplot."
"If we had our hands crossed over our chests," Thomas said, "we’d be invisible."
"I missed dinner," I said. I put my other hand on my stomach. Then, just to prove that I could, I patted my head and rubbed my stomach. "Now I’m out of character—and hungry.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“Dresden’s not gone,” I said. I touched a hand lightly to my brow. “He’s here.” I touched Will’s bare chest, on the left side. “Here. Without him, without what he’s done over the years, you and I would never have been able to pull this off.”
“No,” he agreed. “Probably not. Definitely not.”
“There are a lot of people he’s taught. Trained. Defended. And he’s been an example. No single one of us can ever be what he was. But together, maybe we can.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“For some reason, she didn't want to take the motorcycle, so that left my car, the ever trusty (almost always) Blue Beetle, in old-school VW Bug that had seen me through one nasty scrape after another. More than once, it had been pounded badly, but always it had risen to do battle once more – if by battle one means driving somewhere at a sedate speed, without much acceleration and only middling gas mileage.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“Against anything human, more than one round to the head would be overkill: When the merely mortal goes up against the supernatural, there's no such thing as overkill”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“Mister didn't come with me on cases, being above such trivial matters, but he found me pleasant company when I was at home and not moving around too much, except when he didn't, in which case he went rambling”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“I snorted. “They still make you read Dickens in school? Great Expectations?” “Yeah.” “You can stay at home and hide if you want—and wind up like Miss Havisham,” I said. “Watching life through a window and obsessed with how things might have been.” “Dear God,” she said. “You’ve just made Dickens relevant to my life.” “Weird, right?” I asked her, nodding.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“God isn't about making good things happen to you,or bad things happen to you. He's all about making choice - exercising the gift of free will.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“Once you begin to mass-manufacture anything, by the very nature of the process, you lose the sense of personal attachment you might have to something made by hand.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“It’s boring.”
“Oh,” I said. I rubbed at my jaw. “You think I should have gone four-color?”
Bob stared at me for a second and said, “I have nightmares about Hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you.”
I glowered up at the skull and nodded. “Okay, fine. You think it needs more drama.”
“More anything. Drama would do. Or breasts.”
I sighed and saw where that line of thought was going. “I am not going to hire a leggy secretary, Bob. Get over it.”
“I didn’t say anything about legs. But as long as we’re on the subject . . .”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“Does it hurt to be as suave as you, boss?” “It’s agonizing.” “Looks it.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“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, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“If you’re right, they aren’t the deceased,” Murphy said. “They’re the victims. Big difference. Which is it?” “Wish I could say,” I said. “But the only evidence that could prove it one way or another is leaking out onto the floor. If we get a survivor, maybe I could take a peek and see, but barring that, we’re stuck with legwork.” Murphy sighed and looked down. “Two suicide pacts could—technically—be a coincidence. Three of them, no way it’s natural. This feels more like something’s MO. Could it be another one of those Skavis vampires?” “They gun for loners,” I said, shaking my head. “These”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“Ma’am, the way this usually works is that I ask you a question, and then you tell me a lie. If you give me a dishonest answer before I have the chance to ask the question, it offends my sense of propriety.” Her”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“One more tip, kids. If you had any real talent, the air would practically have been on fire when you got ready to throw down. But you losers don’t have enough magic between you to turn cereal into breakfast.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“She held up her hand, palm up—another one of those gestures, their meanings forgotten by everyone except for long-term wackjobs like Dresden.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“It’s what you do with the want that matters.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“MURPHY’S SATURN HAD gotten a little blown up a couple of years back,”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“It’s another in a long list of things that Martians hardly ever think about: Almost any woman knows that almost any man is stronger than she is. Oh, men know they’re stronger, but they seldom actually stop to think through the implications of that simple reality—implications that are both unnerving and virtually omnipresent, if you aren’t a Martian. You think about life differently when you know that half the people you see have the physical power to do things to you, regardless of whether you intend to allow it—and even implied threats of physical violence have to be taken seriously.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“For the first time ever, Mickey Mouse let me down.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

“I let out a battle cry. Sure, a lot of people might have mistaken it for a sudden yelp of unmanly fear, but trust me: It was a battle cry.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files

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“It always comes back to forgiving, doesn't it?”
― Rebecca Donovan, quote from Out of Breath

“If my twelve-year-old self, of whom I had grown rather fond, thinking about him, were to reproach me: 'Why have you grown up such a dull dog, when I gave you such a good start? Why have you spent your time in dusty libraries, catologuing other people's books instead of writing your own? What had become of the Ram, the Bull and the Lion, the example I gave you to emulate? Where above all is the Virgin, with her shining face and curling tresses, whom I entrusted to you'- what should I say?

I should have an answer ready. 'Well, it was you who let me down, and I will tell you how. You flew too near to the sun, and you were scorched. This cindery creature is what you made me.'

To which he might reply: 'But you have had half a century to get over it! Half a century, half the twentieth century, that glorious epoch, that golden age that I bequeathed to you!'

'Has the twentieth century,' I should ask, 'done so much better than I have? When you leave this room, which I admit is dull and cheerless, and take the last bus to your home in the past, if you haven't missed it - ask yourself whether you found everything so radiant as you imagined it. Ask yourself whether it has fulfilled your hopes. You were vanquished, Colston, you were vanquished, and so was your century, your precious century that you hoped so much of.”
― L.P. Hartley, quote from The Go-Between

“What does reading do, You can learn almost everything from reading, But I read too, So you must know something, Now I'm not so sure, You'll have to read differently then, How, The same method doesn't work for everyone, each person has to invent his or her own, whichever suits them best, some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters, Unless, Unless what, Unless those rivers don't have just two shores but many, unless each reader is his or her own shore, and that shore is the only shore worth reaching.”
― José Saramago, quote from The Cave

“I have always been taught to be proud of being Latina, proud of being Mexican, and I was. I was probably more proud of being a "label" than of being a human being, that's the way most of us were taught. Since the day we enter this world we were a label, a number, a statistic, that's just the way it is. Now if you ask me what race I am, like Zlata, I'll simply say, "I'm a human being.”
― Erin Gruwell, quote from The Freedom Writers Diary

“Raven paced restlessly across the floor of the cabin, sending Jacques a little self-mocking smile. “I’m very good at waiting.”
“I can see that,” Jacques agreed dryly.
“Come on, Jacques”— Raven made the length of the room again, turned to face him—“ don’t you find this even a little bit nerve-racking?” He leaned lazily back in his chair, flashing a cocky grin.
“Being caged up with a beautiful lunatic, you mean?”
“Ha, ha, ha. Do all Carpathian males think they’re stand-up comedians?”
“Just those of us with sisters-in-law who bounce off walls. I feel like I am watching a Ping-Pong ball. Settle down.”
“Well, how long does something like this take? I thought he implied he’d be in and out of the hospital in two minutes, Jacques. What could have gone wrong? Mikhail was very upset.”
“Mikhail did not actually say anything went wrong, did he?” Jacques asked, blankly innocent.
Raven’s large blue-violet eyes settled on Jacques’s face thoughtfully. Jacques squirmed under her suspicious, steady gaze. There was far too much intelligence in her enormous eyes to suit him. He held up a placating hand. “Now, Raven.”
“Don’t you now-Raven me. That brother of yours, worm that he is, male chauvinist unequaled in modern times, told you something he didn’t tell me, didn’t he?”
Leaning back with studied casualness, Jacques tipped his chair to a precarious angle and raised an eyebrow. “Women have vivid imaginations. I think you have a suspicious nature due to your American upbringing.”
“Intellect, Jacques, not imagination,” she corrected sweetly. “My American upbringing made me incredibly intelligent, and believe me, I can spot one of your pathetic Carpathian plots to protect the helpless woman from information you consider would make her fragile little delicate self unnecessarily fearful.”
He grinned at her. “Carpathian males understand the fragile nature of women’s nerves. Women— especially American women— just cannot take the adversity that we men can.”
“I think I should have enjoyed meeting your mother. How a woman could manage to raise two domineering tyrants like you and Mikhail is beyond me.”
His dark eyes laughed at her. “But we are charismatic, sexy, handsome, and always right.”
Raven hooked her foot around his chair and sent him crashing to the floor. Hands on hips, she regarded him with a superior glint. “Carpathian men are vain, dear brother-in-law,” she proclaimed, “but not too bright.”
Jacques glared up at her with mock ferocity. “You have a mean streak in you, woman. Whatever happened to a soft, sweet, Yes, my lord, you’re always right?”
“Try the Dark Ages.”
― Christine Feehan, quote from Dark Prince

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