All Quotes By Tag: Harry-dresden

“They don’t make morgues with windows. In fact, if the geography allows for it, they hardly ever make morgues above the ground. I guess it’s partly because it must be eisier to refrigerate a bunch of coffin-sized chambers in a room insulated by the earth. But that can’t be all there is to it. Under the earth means a lot more than relative altitude. It’s where dead things fit. Graves are under the earth. So are Hell, Gehenna, Hades, and a dozen other reported afterlives.Maybe it says somthing about people. Maybe for us, under the earth is a subtle and profound statement. Maybe ground level provides us with a kind of symbolic boundary marker, an artificial construct that helps us remember that we are alive. Mabye it helps us push death’s shadow back from our lives.I live in a basement apartment and like it. What does that say about me?Probably that I overanalyze things.”

“If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt.”

“I’m not a Wiccan. I’m not big on churches of any kind, despite the fact that I’ve spoken, face-to-face, with an archangel of the Almighty.But there were some things I believed in. Some things I had faith in. And faith isn’t about perfect attendance to services, or how much money you put on the little plate. It isn’t about going skyclad to the Holy Rites, or meditating each day upon the divine.Faith is about what you do. It’s about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It’s about making sacrifices for the good of others–even when there’s not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.Faith is a power of its own, and one even more elusive and difficult to define than magic.”

“I know how you feel,” I said. “You run into something you totally don’t get, and it’s scary as hell. But once you learn something about it, it gets easier to handle. Knowledge counters fear. It always has.”

“Knowledge is the ultimate weapon. It always has been.”

“I don’t want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I’d rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don’t come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p’s and q’s. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I’m in the book.”

“Magic comes from the heart, from your feelings, your deepest expressions of desire. That’s why black magic is so easy—it comes from lust, from fear and anger, from things that are easy to feed and make grow. The sort I do is harder. It comes from something deeper than that, a truer and purer source—harder to tap, harder to keep, but ultimately more elegant, more powerful. My magic. That was at the heart of me. It was a manifestation of what I believed, what I lived. It came from my desire to see to it that someone stood between the darkness and the people it would devour. It came from my love of a good steak, from the way I would sometimes cry at a good movie or a moving symphony. From my life. From the hope that I could make things better for someone else, if not always for me. Somewhere, in all of that, I touched on something that wasn’t tapped out, in spite of how horrible the past days had been, something that hadn’t gone cold and numb inside of me. I grasped it, held it in my hand like a firefly, and willed its energy out, into the circle I had created with the spinning amulet on the end of its chain.”

“Hope is a force of nature. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

“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.”

“See? This is why I’m not religious. I couldn’t possibly keep my mouth shut long enough to get along with everyone else.”

“Laughter is good for you. Nine out of ten stand-up comedians recommend laughter in the face of intense stupidity.”

“Black Court vampires. I just shortened it some.”Ebenezar tsked. “Blampires. That’s the problem with you young people. Shortening all the words.”

“I realized then what had happened.She had turned us–all of us, except for Mouse–into great, gaunt, long-legged hounds.Wonderful!” Lea said, pirouetting upon one toe, laughing. “Come, children!” And she leapt off into the jungle, nimble and swift as a doe.A bunch of us dogs stood around for a moment, just sort of staring at one another.And Mouse said, in what sounded to me like perfectly understandable English, “That bitch.”

“A succubus on the set. Strike that, the health-conscious kid sister made it two… succubuses. Succubusees? Succubi? Stupid Latin correspondence course.”

“Heroism doesn’t pay very well. I try to be cold-blooded and money-oriented, but I keep screwing it up.”