Jim Butcher Quotes

You can't really know what you are made of until you are tested.

In the prosperous times, you put it in your pocket; in the lean times, you put it in your heart and that's when you discover who you are.

Circumstances don't make a person; they reveal him or her.

Challenges, when you're in a tumultuous situation, are an opportunity to grow, an opportunity to get closer to God, an opportunity to find and kind of reform yourself, and to figure out what really matters and what your priorities are.

What happened to me in Somalia doesn't define me.

He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.

Prosperity is a more refined and severer test of character than adversity as one hour of summer sunshine produces greater corruption than the longest winter day.

It was a great experience for me - the ups and downs - because I became a man in Philadelphia.

So for my own survival and my growth, as a soul, as an artist and as an emotional being, it was best that I assume an identity I didn't have to fight anyone over or that I have to constantly engage in constant tug of wars and just reinvent myself.

Everything that, by the grace of the universe, I was able to become is the direct result of everything I went through.

I have overcome some demons in my path.

I think all human beings can surprise themselves when they are in situations where they are tested. That's when you see your true character coming out, and I was definitely tested.

Tribulation first makes one realize what one is.

Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.

You will find that you survive humiliation. And that's an experience of incalculable value.

The real test of a man is not when he plays the role that he wants for himself but when he plays the role destiny has for him.

There is strength deep bedded in our hearts, of which we reck but little till the shafts of heaven have pierced its fragile dwelling. Must not earth be rent before her gems are found?

The greatest blessing is that, within all of this, I've still been challenged every day to question and show who I am.

Someone once said, 'Adversity introduces a man to himself.' For some reason, that's scary, but most people discover that adversity does make them stronger.

And I quoted from Nietzsche: That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.

Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the instrument stretch - what make you go beyond the norm.

You're always trying to look for material that is as challenging as possible, so that's why I like stuff where the characters go through the most difficult times they've ever had in their life. It makes me push myself further and learn more about myself.

Everybody has difficult years, but a lot of times the difficult years end up being the greatest years of your whole entire life, if you survive them.

Travel is about failure or overcoming obstacles, overcoming failures. When a traveler is having lots of good luck, that is not a happy book. That's a book you say, well, I don't need that. I want a life lesson. I want to find out - I want a journey that reflects my life.

Difficulty attracts the man of character because it is in embracing it that he realizes himself