There is the world that should be and the world that is. We live in one and must create the other.

The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.

When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching - they are your family.

Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.

I've always felt that the best whips and chains are in the mind. With a little creativity, the physical ones are hardly necessary.

HARRY DRESDEN—WIZARD Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or Other Entertainment

I checked my gear, my pockets, my shoelaces, and realized that I had crossed the line between making sure I was ready and trying to postpone the inevitable.

I'd made the vampire cry. Great. I felt like a real superhero. Harry Dresden, breaker of monsters' hearts.

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of trauma, I will fear no concussion.

I died. I died and someone made a clerical error and I am in Heaven.

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

Don’t despise any experience. With every experience, you increase in knowledge and wisdom.

Forgiving yourself means that you give up on your hope that the past will be different.

Boxing was not the sport that I thought is was due to all the politics.

Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have nothing to do with it. A merely well informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.

Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!

I think that the best literature has a core that you can't lock to a time or place but that can generate lots of meanings and translations.

You want ME in the ring? Now I know you've been drinking

Here's what happens - you create something in the moment that you feel will be good, and then... people's reactions to it or people referencing it years later, it's a compliment.

What is love but a prelude to sorrow...with heartache ahead for your goal.

I started skating and I kind of liked it because I could run circles around the guys that wouldn't pick me to play baseball.