Quotes From "Cold Days" By Jim Butcher

Maybe this was a male-female translation problem. I read an article once that said that when women have a conversation, they're communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they're actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person's body language. That is, on many levels, astounding to me. I mean, that's like having a freaking superpower. When I, and most other people with a Y chromosome, have a conversation, we're having a conversation. Singular. We're paying attention to what is being said, considering that, and replying to it. All these other conversations that have apparently been going on for the last several thousand years? I didn't even know that they ~existed~ until I read that stupid article, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. Jim Butcher

..when women have a conversation, they're communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they're actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person's body language.... When I, and most other people with a Y chromosome, have a conversion, we're having a conversation. Singular. We're paying attention to what is being said, considering that, and replying to it. All these other conversations have been going on for the last several thousand years? I didn't even know they existed... I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one... So ladies, if you ever have some conversation with your boyfriend or husband or brother or male friend, and you are telling him something perfectly obvious, and he comes away from it utterly clueless? I know it's tempting fate to think to yourself, "The man can't possibly be that stupid! " But yes. Yes, he can. Jim Butcher

You have a visitor, my lord." I frowned, "What?" "That is why I came in here. You have a visitor waiting for you." I stood up, exasperated. "Why didn't you say so?" Lacuna looked confused. "I did. Just now. You were there." She frowned thoughtfully. "Perhaps you have brain damage." "It would not shock me in the least, " I said." Would you like me to cut open your skull and check, my lord?" she asked. Someone that short should not be that disturbing. Jim Butcher

I'm going to use them to track him down and thwart him." "Thwart?" Sarissa asked." Thwart." I said. "To prevent someone from accomplishing something by means of visiting gratuitous violence upon his smarmy person."" I'm pretty sure that isn't the definition, " Sarissa said." It is today. Jim Butcher

No one just starts giggling and wearing black and signs up to become a villainous monster. How the hell do you think it happens? 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-room irrational. But it adds up. And then one day they look around and realized that they're so far over the line that they can't remember where it was. . Jim Butcher

I kept a straight face while my inner Neanderthal spluttered and then went on a mental rampage through a hypothetical produce section, knocking over shelves and spattering fruit everywhere in sheer frustration, screaming, 'JUST TELL ME WHOSE SKULL TO CRACK WITH MY CLUB, DAMMIT! Jim Butcher

Honest. It's almost always best to go with honest. It means you never have to worry about getting your story straight. Jim Butcher

There's always, always a choice. My options might really, truly suck, but that doesn't mean there isn't a choice. Jim Butcher

Sometimes it isn't easy to be sane, smart, and responsible. Sometimes it sucks. Sucks wang. Camel wang. But that doesn't turn wrong into right or stupid into smart. Jim Butcher

Why?” I asked him tiredly. “What would it have changed? What could you possibly have said that would have made a difference?”“ That I was your brother, Harry, ” he said. “That I loved you. That I knew a few things about denying the dark parts of your nature. And that we would get through it.” He put his elblows on his knees and rested his forehead on his hands. “That we’d figure it out. That you weren’t alone.” Stab.Twist.He was right. It was just that simple. Jim Butcher

Oh, I forgot to mention it: My brother is the kind of man whom women stalk. In cooperative packs. Jim Butcher

The only good thing about having your back to the wall is that it makes it really easy to choose which way you're going to go. Jim Butcher

Fire isn't always an element of destruction. Classical alchemical doctrine teaches that it also has dominion over another province: change. Jim Butcher

The last time I was at a supernatural shindig, I got poisoned and then everything there tried to kill me. So I burned the whole place to the ground. Jim Butcher

If I lived through the next day or so, I needed to start keeping track of where these jokers liked to get their bloodthirsty freak on. It might give me an edge someday. Or at least a list of places that could use a nice burning down. I hadn't burned down a building in ages. Jim Butcher

The fire of my tribulations had not simply been pain to be endured. It had been an agent of transformation. After all that I'd been through, I'd changed. Not for the worse, I was pretty sure--at least not yet. But only a moron or a freaking lunatic could have faced the things I had and remained unfazed by them. Jim Butcher

Wait. You work for me?"" I prefer to think of it as managing your incompetence. Jim Butcher

People always equate beauty with good, but it just ain't so. Jim Butcher

I like to think of it less as embezzling and more as an involuntary goodwill contribution. Jim Butcher

Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land. Jim Butcher

Empty night, Harry. Didn't your little adventure in the lake teach you a damned thing?" I scowled some more. "Like what?"" Like life is short, " he [Thomas] said. "Like you don't know when it's going to end. Like some things, left unsaid, can't ever be said. Jim Butcher

Thank God for imminent doomsday. Jim Butcher