What's your favourite conversations in the series?

[Con]

What's your favourite conversations in the series?

Mine's tied Michael and Maggie in Skin Game.

"So Arrogant!"- Makes me smile every time.

"Are you mad at me?"
"Do you want to be my Dad?"- Hit's me right in the feels every time.

[Mira]

 Mine are three really, they take place in Cold Days between Harry and Mother Winter, Harry and Mother Summer, and finally Harry and Rashid, all that paperwork!

[BugBear]

I really enjoyed the bit at the end of The Warrior, between Harry and Jake!Uriel. It captures my favorite theme of the series. I'll still think about it from time to time.

I reread it just now to refresh my memory and see if anything stuck out, and something did. I think Jim may have slid some foreshadowing in. There's this one weird sentence that's barely connected to anything, only three words long, that Uriel casually tosses out before continuing without elaboration. It may be nothing, it may be a casual reveal of the fate of Harry's universe. Depends how you read it. By all accounts talking with archangels just be like that sometimes.

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“Harry,” Jake said, sighing. “The conflict between light and darkness rages on so many levels that you literally could not understand it all. Not yet, anyway.

Shoutout to Lea and Molly interacting in Changes, too. Spooky, crazy death Sidhe lady indeed.

Oh, and happy new year. 

[Mira]

  Yeah, I also love the last conversation between Lash and Harry, there is lots of stuff in that one.

[Avernite]

Molly's trial isnt high-brow, but it's high-stakes.

The talk that leads to the fight in the Deeps.

And, indeed, the chat in Warrior.

[Mira]

Molly's trial isnt high-brow, but it's high-stakes.

The talk that leads to the fight in the Deeps.

And, indeed, the chat in Warrior.

Oh I think we haven't heard all the repercussions from that one yet.  One of the big ones I think came at the end of Battleground when Harry was kicked out of the White Council.

[g33k]

Don't know that I can pick one single "favorite."

Really, it depends on my mood.

Sometimes I'm more in the mood for Harry/Murphy banter, so that's my favorite.
Sometimes I enjoy the character-development more.
Sometimes it's the lore I'm digging.
etc.

[LordDresden2]

Molly's trial isnt high-brow, but it's high-stakes.

Speaking of short sentences with great force, from that trial, when the survivors of the battle arrive:

My old mentor was wearing his usual overalls and T shirt.  His bald pate shone with sweat, and he looked tired, but he was smiling over the pugnacious set of his lower jaw.  The air around him fairly crackled with intensity, a mantle of power that hung around him in a subtle haze.  Ebenezar reached behind him to hold the door open.

Michael walked in.

You have to know about the Knights of the Cross to understand just how portentous those three words can be.

Another few pages later, Harry is musing about how he'll have to protect himself in the future from Langtry's hostility:

I had struck a blow against his authority, declared myself an enemy of his administration.  There was no way he could ignore that kind of challenge from a morally suspect young punk like me.  He would have to bring me down.  If I wanted to avoid that, I'd have to keep my eyes open, my wits sharp, and I'd have to continue to do whatever I could to secure myself against him.

In short, I'd become a politician.

Unfortunately, Harry didn't follow through on this resolve.  He ignored Council politics to the point that it ended in disaster at the end of Battleground.

 

[KurtinStGeorge]

There are different conversations for different purposes.  So I don’t have one favorite conversation; or I might have a favorite, but it might be different if you asked me tomorrow or a week from tomorrow.

I enjoy conversations where you get to learn something important about a character.  Sometimes what you learn is funny, sometimes poignant and sometimes creepy as heck.

I’ve always been impressed by the conversation Harry and Michael had over what to do with “Snake Boy” Quintus Cassius, in Death Masks; after Cassius had surrendered his coin, because it showed us Michael’s core beliefs and true character.

Harry - "You've seen these things," I snarled, stalking over to face Michael. "I've seen the corpses they've left. They would have killed me, Susan, you-hell, all of us-without blinking an eye. God only knows what they have in mind with that curse they're putting together."

Michael - "All power has its limits, Harry." He shook his head. "This is the limit of mine."

Harry - "They might already have killed Shiro. And you're going to let this bastard walk?"

Michael - "I know that," he said in that same deadly quiet voice. "I know they've hurt him. That they're going to kill him. Just as Shiro knew that Nicodemus would betray his promise to set you free. It's one of the things that makes us different than they are, Harry. The blood on their hands does not make it right to bloody my own. My choices are measured against my own soul. Not against the stains on theirs." He looked at Cassius, and the Denarian flinched away from the silent flame in Michael's expression. "It is not for me to judge his soul. No matter how much I might want to."

If you didn’t know who Michael was before that conversation, you certainly did after it.

Seeing as the OP asked what our favorite conversations; plural, are, here is one other one.

The conversation Harry had with Murphy in Summer Knight, when Harry finally came clean and revealed the inner workings of the various supernatural powers and conflicts that were raging and Harry’s role in them. 

I really felt like the series took a dramatic turn at that point.  Because Harry had been pushed to his limits he was finally bringing Murphy fully into the picture.  Even though Harry was doing so because at that moment he needed all the help he could get, you knew it would have major ramifications going forward.

Harry - "One last thing. If you come in on this, you have to understand something. You have to promise me that you won't haul SI and the rest of the police in on everything. You can dig up information, use them discretely, but you can't round up a posse and go gunning for demons."

Murphy - Her eyes narrowed. "Why the hell not?"

Harry - "Because bringing mortal authorities into a conflict is the nuclear assault of the supernatural world. No one wants to see it happen, and if they thought you might do it, they'd kill you. Or they'd pull strings higher up and get you fired, or framed for something. They would never allow it to pass. You'd get yourself ruined or hurt or killed and it's likely a lot of people would go down with you." I paused to let the words sink in, then asked, "Still want me to tell you?"

Murphy - She closed her eyes for a moment and then nodded, once. "Hit me."

Harry - "You're sure?"

Murphy - "Yeah."

Harry - "All right," I said. And I told Murphy all of it. It took a while. I told her about Justin and about Elaine. I told her about the supernatural forces and politics at play in and around the city. I told her about the war I'd started because of what the Red Court had done to Susan. I told her about the faeries and Reuel's murder.

And most of all, I told her about the White Council.

Murphy - "Those spineless, arrogant, egomaniacal sons of bitches," Murphy growled. "Who the hell do they think they are, selling out their own people like that?"

That was the moment when Karin Murphy went from a sometime antagonist to full ally and it was glorious.

Maybe there should be a separate thread for what are our favorite joke lines and conversations in the Dresden Files, because there are certainly a good number of those.

[Mira]

Harry - "Because bringing mortal authorities into a conflict is the nuclear assault of the supernatural world. No one wants to see it happen, and if they thought you might do it, they'd kill you. Or they'd pull strings higher up and get you fired, or framed for something. They would never allow it to pass. You'd get yourself ruined or hurt or killed and it's likely a lot of people would go down with you." I paused to let the words sink in, then asked, "Still want me to tell you?"

Harry's warning to Murphy is significant here in my opinion and yeah, eventually led to her death.  Don't get me wrong, like a strong minded woman and all, but this was also Murphy's weakness.  On some level when it came to justice she thought she had all the answers, hence her reply.

Murphy - "Those spineless, arrogant, egomaniacal sons of bitches," Murphy growled. "Who the hell do they think they are, selling out their own people like that?"

Not saying she was wrong, but at the same time she is judging a world she knows nothing about based on her own sense of justice and right and wrong.  This is why she could never cut it as a Holy Knight and got a Holy Sword shattered, she tried to judge above her pay grade, it was a weakness that Nic understood and exploited.

Contrast that with the conversation Harry has with Michael over Cassius..

Harry - "You've seen these things," I snarled, stalking over to face Michael. "I've seen the corpses they've left. They would have killed me, Susan, you-hell, all of us-without blinking an eye. God only knows what they have in mind with that curse they're putting together."

Michael - "All power has its limits, Harry." He shook his head. "This is the limit of mine."

Harry - "They might already have killed Shiro. And you're going to let this bastard walk?"

Michael - "I know that," he said in that same deadly quiet voice. "I know they've hurt him. That they're going to kill him. Just as Shiro knew that Nicodemus would betray his promise to set you free. It's one of the things that makes us different than they are, Harry. The blood on their hands does not make it right to bloody my own. My choices are measured against my own soul. Not against the stains on theirs." He looked at Cassius, and the Denarian flinched away from the silent flame in Michael's expression. "It is not for me to judge his soul. No matter how much I might want to."

Micheal knows he doesn't have all the answers and left up to God to judge..  Murphy thought she did have all the answers, and fooled everyone including herself because her own form of arrogance. 

[LordDresden2]

Murphy - "Those spineless, arrogant, egomaniacal sons of bitches," Murphy growled. "Who the hell do they think they are, selling out their own people like that?"

Harry's warning to Murphy is significant here in my opinion and yeah, eventually led to her death.  Don't get me wrong, like a strong minded woman and all, but this was also Murphy's weakness.  On some level when it came to justice she thought she had all the answers, hence her reply.Not saying she was wrong, but at the same time she is judging a world she knows nothing about based on her own sense of justice and right and wrong.

There's more than a little truth in that.

For that matter, when Harry and Karrin had this conversation in the Wal-Mart, it was after the loup-garou rampage.  That's vitally important.

Harry - "One last thing. If you come in on this, you have to understand something. You have to promise me that you won't haul SI and the rest of the police in on everything. You can dig up information, use them discretely, but you can't round up a posse and go gunning for demons."

Murphy - Her eyes narrowed. "Why the hell not?"

Harry - "Because bringing mortal authorities into a conflict is the nuclear assault of the supernatural world. No one wants to see it happen, and if they thought you might do it, they'd kill you. Or they'd pull strings higher up and get you fired, or framed for something. They would never allow it to pass. You'd get yourself ruined or hurt or killed and it's likely a lot of people would go down with you." I paused to let the words sink in, then asked, "Still want me to tell you?"

Murphy - She closed her eyes for a moment and then nodded, once. "Hit me."

Harry - "You're sure?"

Murphy - "Yeah."

The pre-Fool Moon Karrin Murphy, IMHO, simply would not have been able to accept the reality of that limitation.  The idea that she would have to ignore felonies, stand aside and do nothing while predators prey on mortal children and murder and rape and otherise do what outfits like the White Court and the Red Court do...it would have been more than she could make herself do before the loup garou forcibly humbled her.

After Fool Moon, she had the hard fact of Ron Carmichael's death to emphasize the truth of Harry's warning:

"Because bringing mortal authorities into a conflict is the nuclear assault of the supernatural world. No one wants to see it happen, and if they thought you might do it, they'd kill you. Or they'd pull strings higher up and get you fired, or framed for something. They would never allow it to pass. You'd get yourself ruined or hurt or killed and it's likely a lot of people would go down with you."