#dresden

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. And there is coppery fear, drawn tight as the strings of a violin, quavering on one single note that cannot possibly be sustained for a single second longer—but goes on and on and on, the tension before the crash of cymbals, the brassy challenge of the horns, the threatening rumble of the kettle drums. That's the kind of fear I felt. Horrible, clutching tension that left the coppery flavor of blood on my tongue. Fear of the creatures in the darkness around me, of my own weakness, the stolen power the Nightmare had torn from me. And fear for those around me, for the folk who didn't have the power I had. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#harry-dresden #harry-dresden

Ack!" I said. Fearless master of the witty dialogue, that's me. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#humor #wit

I put it down to the paranoia of advancing age. It isn't like I'm all that old or anything, especially for a wizard, but age is always advancing and I'm fairly sure it's up to no good. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#age

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

#dresden #fire #age

Life is full of toil, sacrifice, and pain, and from the time we stop growing, we know that we've begun dying. We watch helplessly as year by year, our bodies age and fail, while our survival instincts compel us to keep on going-which means living with the terrifying knowledge that ultimately death is inescapable. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#harry-dresden #life #age

Merlin had, according to legend, created the White Council of Wizards from the chaos of the fall of the Roman Empire. He plunged into the flames of the burning Library of Alexandria to save the most critical texts, helped engineer the Catholic Church as a vessel to preserve knowledge and culture during Europe's Dark Ages, and leapt tall cathedrals in a single bound. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#age

But the only way never to do the wrong thing is never to do anything. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#harry-dresden #inaction #life #molly-carpenter #life

Harry," she said quietly, "I know you must be angry." I burn things to ash and smash holes in buildings when I'm angry," I said. "I'm a couple of steps past that point right now. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#harry-dresden #anger

So. You get handed a holy sword by an archangel, told to go fight the forces of evil, and you somehow remain an atheist. Is that what you're saying? ↗

— Jim Butcher

#harry-dresden #humor #sanya #death

There are things you can't walk away from. Not if you want to live with yourself afterward. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#life #death