Dead Beat

Harry Dresden/Waldo Butters: Polka will never die!

Waldo Butters: Screw up my life?

[He stared at me for a second and then said, deadpan]

Waldo Butters: I’m a five-foot-three, thirty-seven-year-old, single, Jewish medical examiner who needs to pick up his lederhosen from the dry cleaners so that he can play in a one-man polka band at Oktoberfest tomorrow.

[He pushed up his glasses with his forefinger, folded his arms, and said]

Waldo Butters: Do your worst.

Carlos Ramirez: Everyone else who lets me ride on their dinosaur calls me Carlos.

Harry Dresden: Took cover. In the action business, when you don't want to say you ran like a mouse, you call it 'taking cover.' It's more heroic.

Malcolm Dresden: Son. Everyone dies alone. That's what it is. It's a door. It's one person wide. When you go through it, you do it alone." His fingers squeezed me tight. "But it doesn't mean you've got to be alone before you go through the door. And believe me, you aren't alone on the other side."

Harry Dresden: On the whole, we're a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain's brother Abel probably never saw it coming. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding. For freaking Cain.

Quintus Cassius: I have dreamed of this night, boy.

[he purred, and gently stroked the side of my face with the baseball bat.]

Quintus Cassius: In my day, we would say that revenge is sweet. But times have changed. How do you say...? "Payback is a bitch."

Harry Dresden: Because Thomas is too pretty to die. And because I'm too stubborn to die. And most of all because tomorrow is Oktoberfest, Butters, and polka will never die.