|
74d3404
|
Ascher eyed me. "You have a very negative attitude. Just relax and we'll get this done. Try not to look around so much. And for God's sake, smile." I smiled. "Maybe without clenching your jaw."
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
ecd8b05
|
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 |
|
8f180c6
|
I was casting everything I had done, everything I believed, everything I had chosen--everything I was--against the will of an ancient being of darkness, terror, and malice, a fundamental power of the world. And the bonds and the will of Mother Winter could not constrain me.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
15daea2
|
I leaned against the wall, dazed, panting, and gasped, in my deepest and most gravelly voice, "No one can chain the Hulk!"
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
d1c8d6a
|
Michael watched my face closely as we carried her. "What?" I asked. "You aren't angry," he said. "That she's hurt." "Like hell I'm not," I said. "It's coming. After we take care of her. When it's time." Michael grunted. "You aren't more angry than you would be if it was me. Or Butters, here." I grunted. "She's not a delicate princess," I said. "She's a warrior. Warriors have enemies. Sometimes warriors get hurt." I felt my jaws clench. "And..
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
24049af
|
Not everyone can be equally right, Harry." "But believe you me, everyone can be equally wrong," I said."
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
688c2e4
|
That's just a fiction," I said, "a little game of protocol." "Little games of protocol are how one shows respect, especially to those with whom one does not get along famously well. It can be tedious, but generally is less trouble than a duel would be."
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
86c1a6e
|
There was a low growling sound and the came gliding up out of the parking garage, dripping water from its gleaming surface like some lantern-eyed leviathan rising from the depths. There were still a few dents and dings in it, but the broken glass had all been replaced, and the engine sounded fine. Okay, I'm not like a car fanatic or anything - but the guitar riff from "Bad to the Bone" started playing in my head." --
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
ae02585
|
Well. You've got me cornered, don't you? I'm at your mercy." Her lips quirked. She took a drag of her cigarette. "And I like a man who just won't stop."
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
b252d17
|
This whole thing," I said "is going to come down to guessing who isn't what they look like." "Who is?" Karrin asked, her hands moving surely over the weapon. "Ever."
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
3bb20cf
|
Of course cats [can see ghosts]. As far as I can tell, all cats. But they aren't terribly impressed with the fact that we're dead and still present.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
55b6f05
|
I've had sex that didn't feel as good as Maeve's smile.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
7c87ab2
|
Felicia managed to stagger to her feet, open the front door, and limp haltingly to the white limousine idling on the snowy street outside the house. Murphy went to the window to watch Felicia get into the limo and depart. "Yeah," I said, deadpan. "The little blond woman has two of them."
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
fc2acfb
|
You," Madeline said, her voice hollow and wheezing, "are a bad case of herpes, wizard. You're inconvenient, embarrassing, no real threat, and you simply will not go away."
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
d38a24e
|
I knew I didn't have much of a chance of getting away from that swarm of fae piranha, but it was an infinitely larger chance than I would have if I stayed in the car and burned to death. Hell's bells, what I wouldn't give to have my shield bracelet. Or my old staff. I didn't even have an umbrella.
|
|
weapons
|
Jim Butcher |
|
bc5c19e
|
She'd grown up in a strict household; she'd gone insane with freedom the minute she ran away and got out on her own.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
e7d33a7
|
Oh," the girl said, shaking her head. "Don't be so simple. People adore monsters. They fill their songs and stories with them. They define themselves in relation to them. You know what a monster is, young shade? Power. Power and choice. Monsters make choices. Monsters shape the world. Monsters force us to become stronger, smarter, better. They sift the weak from the strong and provide a forge for the steeling of souls. Even as we curse mons..
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
99c4101
|
That", I said, "is an awfully lovely woman. I thought I should let you know, kid, in case your inexperience had blinded you to the fact." "Lying," Ramirez stated, blushing. "Evil."
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
63796d0
|
Hell's bells, Morty," I said. "Next you'll be telling me that I didn't even meet his shade. That I deluded myself into deluding myself into deluding him into deluding me that I made the whole thing up."
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
7be207c
|
she bowed just low enough to draw the young man's [Daniel Carpenter] eyes to her decolletage. He flushed and looked away sternly. After a second. Tough to blame the kid. I've been a young man. Boobs are near the center of the universe.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
a1028d9
|
Thomas hooked a thumb at Butters. "Check out Dr. Marcus Welby, MD, here." "I'd have gone with Doogie Howser, maybe," I said. "Split the difference at McCoy?" Thomas asked? "Perfect."
|
|
nerd
|
Jim Butcher |
|
15ca92c
|
Lara [Raith] was gorgeous, brilliant, and sexier than a Swedish bikini team hiking up a mountain of money.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
2ef793d
|
A smile fought its way through her expression of pain for a moment, and she said, "Yeah, it really kind of was, wasn't it? Was that a Salamander?" "Pretty sure," I said. "They're so much bigger than in those Xanth books."
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
ca1a2d5
|
He fell into step beside me and we both got into the -- he got in the red door. I got in the white one, and we peered out over the grey hood[...]
|
|
humor
|
Jim Butcher |
|
3876022
|
There's power in the touch of another person's hand. We acknowledge it in little ways, all the time. There's a reason human beings shake hands, hold hands, slap hands, bump hands. It comes from our very earliest memories, when we all come into the world blinded by light and color, deafened by riotous sound, flailing in a suddenly cavernous space without any way of orienting ourselves, shuddering with cold, emptied with hunger, and justifiab..
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
17dc4a3
|
You aren't explaining it very well." "Maybe," I said. "Or maybe you aren't learning it very well." --
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
9fccc06
|
Grimm frowned. "Ah. Um. Am I in any danger?" "You're dead as a stone, man!" "I am?" "Yes. No, actually, not even remotely, but for purposes of this conversation, yes."
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
9876c23
|
I have a problem with creepy, dead, poisonous things. So sue me.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
a09502a
|
Sometimes I thought it might be nice not to make any choices. If I never had one, I could never screw it up.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
074cfd5
|
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
297d4c2
|
What was the point in all the fighting with gauntlets if they were only going to stop fighting the moment the outnumbered fools decided the fight was over? Rowl flicked his tail in exasperation. Humans.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
9a2e564
|
Susan smiled at me, giving Molly the Female Once-Over--a process by which one woman creates a detailed profile of another woman based upon about a million subtle details of clothing, jewelry, makeup, and body type, and then decides how much of a social threat she might be. Men have a parallel process, but it's binary: Does he have beer? If yes, will he share with me?
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
80488ce
|
Love you. That should have been simple enough to say. But the words stuck hard in my throat. I'd never said them to anyone I didn't lose,
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
fec6af3
|
Truth does not become untruth simply because its existence upsets the scion of a High House.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
6075b03
|
I felt like a collection of complaints and malfunctions.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
1b330df
|
Dead before the sun rises, I said. Stars, Bob, why don't you just go over the melodramatic edge and tell me that I'm going to be sleeping with the fishes?
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
384cf78
|
I slip into the archaic at dramatically appropriate moments. So sue me.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
e9a7206
|
Christ, Harry," Murphy said quietly. "No one just starts giggling and wearing black and signs up to become a villainous monster. How the hell do you think it happens?" She shook her head, her eyes pained. "It happens to people. Just people. They make questionable choices, for what might be very good reasons. They make choice after choice, and none of them is slaughtering roomfuls of saints, or murdering hundreds of baby seals, or rubber-roo..
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
08c589a
|
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 |
|
476815a
|
Those who had never seen a tribe of cats at war, or at least playing war games, would look upon what came next as utter chaos.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
77a8429
|
I tried not to be too obviously interested, and fumbled my notebook and trusty pencil from my duster's pocket.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
3398df1
|
I dealt with the White Council my whole life, so I'm used to being treated like a mushroom--" "Eh?" Ascher asked. "Kept in the dark and fed bullshit," Binder reported calmly. "Ah."
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |
|
acdce78
|
Death is only frightening from the near side.
|
|
death
|
Jim Butcher |
|
fb80b6e
|
I try to make thinking an ongoing process.
|
|
|
Jim Butcher |