“Anger is just anger. It isn't good. It isn't bad. It just is. What you do with it is what matters. It's like anything else. You can use it to build or to destroy. You just have to make the choice."
Constructive anger," the demon said, her voice dripping sarcasm.
Also known as passion," I said quietly. "Passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves. Passion has brought justice where there was savagery. Passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear. Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, stronger, more beautiful.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“There is a primal reassurance in being touched, in knowing that someone else, someone close to you, wants to be touching you. There is a bone-deep security that goes with the brush of a human hand, a silent, reflex-level affirmation that someone is near, that someone cares.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“But the only way never to do the wrong thing is never to do anything.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“Loneliness is a hard thing to handle. I feel it, sometimes. When I do, I want it to end. Sometimes, when you're near someone, when you touch them on some level that is deeper than the uselessly structured formality of casual civilized interaction, there's a sense of satisfaction in it. Or at least, there is for me. It doesn't have to be someone particularly nice. You don't have to like them. You don't even have to want to work with them. You might even want to punch them in the nose. Sometimes just making that connection is its own experience, its own reward.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“People love dogs. You can never go wrong adding a dog to the story.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“Knowledge is the ultimate weapon. It always has been.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“Age is always advancing and I'm fairly sure it's up to no good.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“Many things are not as they seem: The worst things in life never are.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“My hair had grown out long and shaggy—not in that sexy-young-rock-star kind of way but in that time-to-take-Rover-to-the-groomer kind of way.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“Don't call me a dinosaur. It isn't fair to the dinosaurs. What did a dinosaur ever do to you?”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“There was a sound like a human yawn, and then the skull turned slightly toward me and asked, "What's up, boss?"
"Evil's afoot."
"Well, sure," Bob said, "because it refuses to learn the metric system. Otherwise it'd be up to a meter by now.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“The wacky thing about those bad guys is that you can't count on them to be obvious. They forget to wax their mustaches and goatees, leave their horns at home, send their black hats to the dry cleaner's. They're funny like that.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“If you can't manage courtesy, try silence.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“Yeah, but I forgot to take my George Orwell-shaped multivitamins along with my breakfast bowl of Big Brother Os this morning.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“Being a wizard gives you more power than most, but it doesn't change your heart. We're all human. We're all of us equally naked before the jaws of pain.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“Bigots see something they expect and then they stop thinking about what is in front of them. It's probably how they got to be bigots in the first place.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“Just because you start out as one thing, it doesn't mean you can't grow into something else.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“But… all I said was that I was scared."
After what you got to experience? That's smart, kid," I said. "I'm scared, too. Every time something like this happens, it scares me. But being strong doesn't get you through. Being smart does. I've beaten people and things who were stronger than I was, because they didn't use their heads, or because I used what I had better than they did. It isn't about muscle, kiddo, magical or otherwise. It's about your attitude. About your mind."
She nodded slowly and said, "About doing things for the right reasons."
You don't throw down like this just because you're strong enough to do it," I said. "You do it because you don't have much choice. You do it because it's unacceptable to walk away, and still live with yourself later."
She stared at me for a second, and then her eyes widened. "Otherwise, you're using power for the sake of using power."
I nodded. "And power tends to corrupt. It isn't hard to love using it, Molly. You've got to go in with the right attitude or…"
Or the power starts using you," she said. She'd heard the argument before, but this was the first time she said the words slowly, thoughtfully, as if she'd actually understood them, instead of just parroting them back to me. Then she looked up. "That's why you do it. Why you help people. You're using the power for someone other than yourself.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“You must be Warden Ramirez."
This is the part where I got nervous. Ramirez loved women. Ramirez never shut up about women. Well, he never shut up about anything in general, but he'd go on and on about various conquests and feats of sexual athleticism and—
"A virgin?" Lara blurted. Lara blurted. She turned her head to me, grey eyes several shades paler than they had been, and very wide. "Really, Harry, I'm not sure what to say. Is he a present?”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“I was sitting in my lab, my hand spread open on the table, while the skull examined my palm.
I'd worn a mark there for years--an unblemished patch of skin amidst all the burn scars, in the perfect shape of the angelic sigil that was Lasciel's name.
The mark was gone.
In its place was just an irregular patch of unburned skin.
"It looks like there's no mark there anymore," Bob said.
I sighed. "Thank you, Bob," I said. "It's good to have a professional opinion."
"Well, what did you expect?" Bob said. The skull swiveled around on the table and tilted up to look at my face. "Hmmmmm. And you say the entity isn't responding to you anymore?"
"No. And she's always jumped every time I said frog."
"Interesting," Bob said.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well, from what you told me, this psychic attack the entity blocked for you was quite severe."
I shivered, remembering. "Yeah."
"And the process she used to accelerate your brain and shield you was traumatic as well."
"Right. She said it could cause me brain damage."
"Uh-huh," Bob said. "I think it did."
"Huh?"
"See what I mean?" Bob asked cheerfully. "You're thicker already."
"Harry get hammer," I said. "Smash stupid talky skull.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“Sticks and stones and small caliber bullets may break my bones... Words will never, et cetera.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“She gave me a hard look. "No one likes a wiseass, Harry."
"Are you kidding? As long as the wiseass is talking to someone else, people love 'em.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“Life is easier when you can write off others as monsters, demon, as horrible threats that must be hated and feared the thing is you can't do that without becoming them, just a little.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“[Mouse is] with us. The dog is a handicap-assist animal."
The kid lifted his eyebrows.
"My mouth is partially paralyzed," I said. "It makes it hard for me to read. He's here to help me with the big words. Tell me if I'm supposed to push or pull on doors, that kind of thing.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“The darkness inside you allows for a more human experience. Giving you the very thing you lacked before: an insider’s knowledge of the two faces of man—the constant struggle between darkness and light.”
― Alyson Noel, quote from Horizon
“Under the mellowing influence of good food and good music, Adam relaxed, and I discovered that underneath that overbearing, hot-tempered Alpha disguise he usually wore was a charming, over-bearing, hot-tempered man. He seemed to enjoy finding out that I was as stubborn and disrespectful of authority as he’d always suspected.
He ordered dessert without consulting me. I’d have been angrier, but it was something I could never have ordered for myself: chocolate, caramel, nuts, ice cream, real whipped cream, and cake so rich it might as well have been a brownie.
“So,” he said, as I finished the last bit, “I’m forgiven?”
“You are arrogant and overstep your bounds,” I told him, pointing my clean fork at him.
“I try,” he said with false modesty. Then his eyes darkened and he reached across the table and ran his thumb over my bottom lip. He watched me as he licked the caramel from his skin.
I thumped my hands down on the table and leaned forward. “That is not fair. I’ll eat your dessert and like it—but you can’t use sex to keep me from getting mad.”
He laughed, one of those soft laughs that start in the belly and rise up through the chest: a relaxed, happy sort of laugh.
To change the subject, because matters were heating up faster than I was comfortable with, I said, “So Bran tells me that he ordered you to keep an eye out for me.”
He stopped laughing and raised both eyebrows. “Yes. Now ask me if I was watching you for Bran.”
It was a trick question. I could see the amusement in his eyes. I hesitated, but decided I wanted to know anyway. “Okay, I’ll bite. Were you watching me for Bran?”
“Honey,” he drawled, pulling on his Southern roots. “When a wolf watches a lamb, he’s not thinking of the lamb’s mommy.”
I grinned. I couldn’t help it. The idea of Bran as a lamb’s mommy was too funny. “I’m not much of a lamb,” I said.
He just smiled.”
― Patricia Briggs, quote from Moon Called
“Remember, my dear Evelina, nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman: it is, at once, the most beautiful and most brittle of all human things.”
― Fanny Burney, quote from Evelina
“the sweet juices of your mouth
are like castles bathed in honey.
i've never had it done so gently before.
you have put a circle of castles
around my penis and you swirl them
like sunlight on the wings of birds.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from Trout Fishing in America / The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar
“But he could not go up to the room as yet, and seating himself on a stone step, his head on his arms, he wept silently. Years had passed since he had shed tears, or so it seemed. Surely years since he had let them flow so copiously. And what stopped him finally was that he could hear his own crying.”
― Anne Rice, quote from Cry to Heaven
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