“The human mind is not a terribly logical or consistent place.”
“You're in America now," I said. "Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.”
“There are bad things in the world. There's no getting away from that. But that doesn't mean nothing can be done about them. You can't abandon life just because it's scary, and just because sometimes you get hurt. ”
“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.”
“No one is an unjust villain in his own mind. Even - perhaps even especially - those who are the worst of us. Some of the cruelest tyrants in history were motivated by noble ideals, or made choices that they would call 'hard but necessary steps' for the good of their nation. We're all the hero of our own story.”
“There's a fine line between audacity and idiocy.”
“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.”
“Like “love,” “hope” is one of those ridiculously disproportional words that by all rights should be a lot longer.”
“I love being a wizard. Every day is like Disneyland.”
“There is the world that should be and the world that is. We live in one and must create the other.”
“You," Madeline said, her voice hollow and wheezing, "are like a bad case of herpes, wizard. You're inconvenient, embarassing, no real threat, and you simply will not go away.”
“Night wasn't so much falling as sharpening its claws.”
“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....”
“Maybe the Merlin was right. Maybe its better to look stupid but strong, than it is to look smart but weak, I don't know. I'm not sure I want to believe that the world stage bears that strong a resemblance to high school.”
“It isn't a club," I said calmly. "It's a walking stick."
"Six feet long."
"It's traditional Ozark folk art."
"With dents and nicks all over it."
I thought about it for a second. "I'm insecure?"
"Get a blanket." He held out his hand. I signed and passed my staff over to him. "Do I get a receipt?"
He took a notepad from his pocket and wrote on it. Then he passed it over to me. It read: Received, one six foot tall traditional Ozark walking club from Mr. Smart-Ass.”
“As far as the Council is concerned, the U.S. Wardens are a bunch of mushrooms."
"Eh?"
"Kept in the dark and fed on bullshit.”
“I can't believe I'm about to say this," I said. "So think real careful about where this is coming from. Have you people ever considered *talking* when you've got a problem?”
“I like to stay cozy with my paranoia, not pass her around to my friends and family.”
“He gave me an inscrutable look that said maybe he would and maybe he wouldn't. Mister was a cat, and cats generally considered it the obligation of the universe to provide shelter, sustenance, and amusement as required. I think Mister considered it beneath his dignity to plan for the future.”
“I guess maybe you don’t get to be the Merlin of the White Council by saving up frequent-flier miles”
“She looked up at me with a polite smile, her dark hair long and appealing...I liked the smile.
Maybe I didn't look like a beaten-up bum. Maybe on me it just looked ruggedly determined.
"I'm sorry, sir," she said, "but the addiction counseling center is on twenty-six."
Sigh.”
“He had hard, steady eyes, and all the comforting, reassuring charm of a dental drill. - Harry Dresden describing Morgan”
“Molly, you are a good person. Don't let anyone take that away from you. Not even yourself.”
“This is Waldo Butters, and his geek penis is longer and harder than any of ours put together.”
“Murphy nodded, frowning at the road ahead of her. "The reason treachery is so reveiled," she said in a careful tone of voice, "is because it usually comes from someone you didn't think could possibly do such a thing.”
“After a few minutes, Molly came partway up the short ladder to the bridge and stopped. "Do I need to ask permission to come up there or something?"
"Why would you?" I asked.
She considered. "It's what they do on Star Trek?”
“I checked my gear, my pockets, my shoelaces, and realized that I had crossed the line between making sure I was ready and trying to postpone the inevitable.”
“Everyone dies, honey," I said, very quietly. "Everyone. There's no 'if.' There's only 'when.'" I let that sink in for a moment. "When you die, do you want to feel ashamed of what you've done with your life? Feel ashamed of what your life meant?”
“I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can't live somebody else's life for them. They have to make their own choices, and sometimes all we can do is learn to live with them.”
“Ursan flourished the knife, threatening me. "Talk, or I'll start cutting off body parts."
"Yours? Or mine?" I kept my voice steady despite my insides twisting into goo. "It's an important distinction.”
“kinds of disguises and dance to all sorts of tunes to make myself Harry’s addiction. If he had not been fatally flawed, early corrupted by the brutality of his school, I should never have been able to keep him from Celia. I knew I was a hundred times more beautiful than she, a hundred times stronger. But I could not always remember that, when I saw the quiet strength she drew on when she believed she was morally right. And I could not be certain that every man would prefer me, when I remembered how Harry had looked at her with such love when we came back from France. I would never forgive Celia for that summer. Even though it was the summer when I cared nothing for Harry but rode and danced day and night with John, I would not forget that Celia had taken my lover from me without even making an effort at conquest. And now my husband bent to kiss her hand as if she were a queen in a romance and he some plighted knight. I might give a little puff of irritation at this scene played out before my very window. Or I might measure the weakness in John and think how I could use it. But use it I would. Even if I had felt nothing else for John I should have punished him for turning his eyes to Celia. Whether I wanted him or not was irrelevant. I did not want my husband loving anyone else. For dinner that afternoon I dressed with extra care. I had remodelled the black velvet gown that I had worn for the winter after Papa’s death. The Chichester modiste knew her job and the deep plush folds fitted around my breasts and waist like a tight sheath, flaring out in lovely rumpled folds over the panniers at my hips. The underskirt was of black silk and whispered against the thick velvet as I walked. I made sure Lucy powdered my hair well, and set in it some black ribbon. Finally, I took off my pearl necklace and tied a black ribbon around my throat. With the coming of winter, my golden skin colour was fading to cream, and against the black of the gown I looked pale and lovely. But my eyes glowed green, dark-lashed and heavy-lidded, and I nipped my lips to make them red as I opened the parlour door. Harry and John were standing by the fireplace. John was as far away from Harry as he could be and still feel the fire. Harry was warming his plump buttocks with his jacket caught up, and drinking sherry. John, I saw in my first sharp glance, was sipping at lemonade. I had been right. Celia was trying to save my husband. And he was hoping to get his unsteady feet back on the road to health. Harry gaped openly when he saw me, and John put a hand on the mantelpiece as if one smile from me might destroy him. ‘My word, Beatrice, you’re looking very lovely tonight,’ said Harry, coming forward”
“I'm not going anywhere. I hope. It's been an adventure. We took some casualties over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost.
But I wouldn't have missed it for the world.”
“Like sheep which, having been driven to a pasture, can now spread out at their leisure, the clouds began to drift. Afternoon sunlight sliced through into the still waters. The boomerang hung in the sky, and the boy thought he would have to find a new word for the way the colours glowed.
In the meantime, he looked down at the water and tried out the word he'd been taught by his grandfather, who'd been taught it by his grandfather, and which had been kept for thousands of years for when it would been needed.
It meant the smell after rain.
It had, he thought, been well worth waiting for.”
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