Growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something. Each time you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize there are more flavors of pain than coffee. Pain does two things: it teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. And everything that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one way or another.

... They paid some madman who thought he was a decorator a lot of money to make the place look hip and unique. May be it's my lack of fashion sense talking, but I thought they should have held out for one of those gorillas who has learned to paint. The results would have been of similar quality, and they could have paid in fresh produce. - Harry Dresden, Small Favor, Jim Butcher

Go back,” he said. “Can’t. Stand aside?” “Can’t.” “So it’s like that?” I said. Fix exhaled. Then he nodded. “Yeah.” And for the first time in a decade the Winter Knight and Summer Knight went to war.

I grunted. It's something I picked up over a fifteen-year career in law enforcement. Men have managed to create a complex and utterly impenetrable secret language consisting of monosyllabic sounds and partial words—and they are apparently too thick to realize it exists. Maybe they really are from Mars. I'd been able to learn a few Martian phrases over time, and one of the useful ones was the grunt that meant "I acknowledge that I've heard what you said; please continue.

Nobody can be bad at everything. There’s no such thing as a perfect screwup.

There should be a rule against your own inner monologue throwing around that much sarcasm.

Doroga thumped a finger against his skull. Head got nothing to do with the heart. Your heart wants what it wants. Head got to learn that it can only kill the heart or else get out of the way