C.J. Cherryh Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 79 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by C.J. Cherryh.
Famous Quotes By C.J. Cherryh
Trust was a word you couldn't translate. But the atevi had fourteen words for betrayal. — C.J. Cherryh
It struck at the root of intentions, not at the flower.
And both root and the flower were important to him, one having to do with what one meant to do ... and the other, most fearsome, with the outcome of it. — C.J. Cherryh
Clark. Superman. She loved two men. It was extraordinary how alike and how different they were.-Lois Lane — C.J. Cherryh
Intimidation needs response, bait needs biting. If you do neither, the attacker has nothing to build on. — C.J. Cherryh
Seeing the mystery of forest leaves and the wonder in a water-polished stone, a light had come on him, a bright, bright hope, that this was the true world, all around him, truer than his darkening sight. And ever after that and forever, he hoped for himself, and whenever he thought of dark and practical deeds, why, that light distracted him toward this dream he had ... — C.J. Cherryh
You know its shape, since you have it. Give it up, and be paid. Or don't - and be paid, hani, be paid then too. — C.J. Cherryh
Once he had thought it a refuge, once he had thought it holiness ... But now he began to suspect that the good brothers did not shadow the ether not because they were good, but because they had masked themselves from everything, had carefully erased their stray thoughts, had poured out their human longings, emptied themselves of desires and become so transparent as existence that they had not only ceased to be evil, they had ceased to be good. They had ceased to fight the battles of everyday life, and simply weighed nothing. Not a feather. Not a grain. They had given up everything, until they vanished from the scale of all that mattered, having given away themselves long before any power declared the contest. — C.J. Cherryh
I couldn't yet see the limits of my life, but he could see the limits of his. His life was thin, and he had a hunger for recognition. — C.J. Cherryh
Were the seeds of next things always there, in the circle of the year, and was that how the world worked its miracles? — C.J. Cherryh
The world was full of life, more life than they could hold back with guns or fences; it came into the town at night; it seduced the children and year by year crept closer. — C.J. Cherryh
Jane leaned back against the counter and stared at the ceiling. At the traditional location of God, no matter what the planet. — C.J. Cherryh
It was a monumental achievement that the serpentine tc'a had once upon a time gotten the knnn to understand the concept of trade: so nowadays knnn simply contacted a station, rushed onto its methane-dock and deposited whatever they liked, grabbed whatever they wanted and left. This was an improvement over their former behavior, in which they simply looted and left. — C.J. Cherryh
But his political sense kept up a persistent itch that said: A, Given ignorance in the mix, stupidity was at least as common in politics as astute maneuvering; B, Crisis always drew insects; and, C, Inevitably the party trying to resolve a matter had to contend with the party most willing to exploit it. — C.J. Cherryh
Deal with the Devil if the Devil has a constituency - and don't complain about the heat. — C.J. Cherryh
A year of ending and beginning, a year of loss and finding ... and all of you were with me through the storm. I drink your health, your wealth, your fortune for long years to come, and I hope for many more days in which we can gather like this. — C.J. Cherryh
For another - you can move faster than she can. You are as recognizable as she is. And you are willing to take cover. We are not so certain about the dowager. — C.J. Cherryh
Could there be a snare in too much beauty? Could there be too much expectation of good, and too much fiath?
Could ever there be too much love?
And could love require lies? — C.J. Cherryh
If I can make you angry ... I have passed your guard again. I have given you something to think about besides the Game — C.J. Cherryh
The world was so beautiful, and there was so much of it: he could gaze forever at the wonder of leaves and not see them all: could inhale the wind and not smell all its scents, hear the sounds of men and horses and not hear all the sounds of the woods, and taste the thousand flavors in stale water and still find it wonderful ... because it was not the darkness. — C.J. Cherryh
Writing day and night for months ... that's hard. — C.J. Cherryh
Is that the end ... of all the races and civilizations, and the dreams of the world, to be able to leave a few stones buried beneath the sands, to tell the Dark that we were here? — C.J. Cherryh
Also, a foreign accent if at least intelligible can sound quite sexy. — C.J. Cherryh
Poisoning us," Bren said, faced with what was a truly attractive service, and with the servants still in the room, "is a process of inconveniently many steps, though conservative of the furniture. One believes we may just have breakfast this morning, nadiin-ji. — C.J. Cherryh
There was a certain wisdom in doing little, when one was obliged to act in ignorance. — C.J. Cherryh
For me the purest and truest art in the world is science fiction. — C.J. Cherryh
But, oh, how precious those things were! To look at the sky, breathe the cold wind, have fingers nipped by chill and skin stung red and heart stirred to life, gods, he had been dead until Tristen arrived and asked him the first vexing question, and posed him the first insoluble puzzle, and marveled at hailstones and mourned over falling leaves. What miracles there were all around ... — C.J. Cherryh
I would suggest that you remember she is old because some of her enemies are dead. — C.J. Cherryh
He was home, but he wasn't. He had gotten where he had to go, but he hadn't. He had found out who he was, but he didn't know why it had failed to satify his questions. — C.J. Cherryh
There is your best path, if you can get on it and direct it as best you can. The direction it may take yet is not in your power: but what sort of man walks that path, when you are a man, that you can decide. — C.J. Cherryh
A fine lady she weren't, oh, but a damn fine woman and a brave one ... — C.J. Cherryh
Yes, ma'am," he said, and folded his hands and stopped where he was, listening, waiting while a very sick woman tried to gather her faculties.
"First off, tell the dowager she's a right damn bastard."
It was no time for a translator to argue. Mitigation, however, was a reasonable tactic. "Aiji-ma, Sabin-aiji has heard our suspicions regarding Tamun and received assurances from me and Gin-aiji that we have not arranged a coup of our own. She addresses you with an untranslatable term sometimes meaning extreme disrepute, sometimes indicating respect for an opponent."
Ilisidi's mouth drew down in wicked satisfaction. "Return the compliment, paidhi."
"Captain, she says you're a right damn bastard, too. — C.J. Cherryh
He could be distracted, still, by beauty, by the wonder of a stroke of sunlight. Perhaps at such times he made himself open to wizardry-or conversely, was as warded and safe at such moments as Ynefel at its strongest. Perhaps threats simply slid past his attention and he made himself immune. — C.J. Cherryh
Yes, aiji-ma." "What is this agreement? You are most valuable when you argue, paidhi! Do not say yes to me!" "I shall most strenuously object when you are wrong, aiji-ma. You have been infallibly right at least this last hour." "Ha. — C.J. Cherryh
Trade isn't about goods. Trade is about information. Goods sit in the warehouse until information moves them. — C.J. Cherryh
Women did such things and went on doing them while the sun died because in all of women's lives there were so many moments that would kill the mind if one thought about them, which would suck the heart and the life out of one, and engrave lines in the face and put gray in the hair if ever one let one's mind work; but there was in the rhythm and the fascination of the stitches a loss of thought, a void, a blank, that was only numbers and not even that, because the mind did not need to count, the fingers did, the length of a thread against the finger measured evenly as a ruler could divide it, the slight difference in tension sensed finely as a machine could sense, the exact number of stitches keeping pattern without really the need to count, but something inward and regular as the beat of a heart, as the slow passing of time which could be frozen in such acts, or speeded past. — C.J. Cherryh
A warrior is free to be a hero and pull off daring do and the soldier is irresponsible if he does it. — C.J. Cherryh
Myself, I love the woods. I love the wild places. Ask me where I'd go for a vacation and it invariably involves the open country. Ask me where I'd live, however, and it would always be in the center, in the beating heart of a city. — C.J. Cherryh
Rattle a lawyer's door and you get more lawyers. — C.J. Cherryh
Never start a war with something you can't talk to. — C.J. Cherryh
If you're up against a smart opponent, make him think himself to death. — C.J. Cherryh
He knew that he wielded magic as well as iron, and yet looked away from it, and made himself fables to explain his own presence in the world, and sought gods who might be more powerful than himself. It would be very comfortable if there were someone more powerful than himself, on this Road, on this particular morning, someone to guide him, even someone to blame ... — C.J. Cherryh
There was love, a reliable and real love grown in a handful of days, and Tristan did not know why it was: friendship had happened to both of them, on the sudden, completely aside from Tristan's both endangering and saving Crissand's life.
It was no reason related to that, it was no reason that either of them quite knew. Crissand had simply risen on his horizon like the sun of his banner ... and that was that ... They were together, and there was a great deal right with the day simply in that. — C.J. Cherryh
Flying was no cure for want of sleep. The brain wanted time to recycle: when it became all one long, uninterrupted day, the ability to keep going and to keep thinking was no warrant it was healty even for Superman.-Superman — C.J. Cherryh
Tabini was at least canny enough in the differences between atevi and human to know that, gut level, he might think he understood - but chances were very good that he wouldn't, couldn't, and never would, unaided by the paidhi, come up with the right forecast of human behavior because he didn't come with the right hardwiring. Average people didn't analyze what they thought: they thought they thought, and half of it was gut reaction. — C.J. Cherryh
Ignorance killed the cat; curiosity was framed! — C.J. Cherryh
And she learned to do that, be very nice to people she knew quite well were the Enemy, and even like them sometimes: it didn't mean you weren't going to Get them, because they were bound to do something that would remind you what they were sooner or later. — C.J. Cherryh
Belief ... was its own magic-so long as it was carefully placed, often examined, like a bridge kept in careful repair. — C.J. Cherryh
Honor to the earth," the abbot said, "honor to the dead in the passing of the year; honor to the living, in the coming of the new. A Great Year passes tonight. A new one begins. Let the good that is old continue and let the rest perish ... — C.J. Cherryh
One tribe moves out and one tribe stays. History broadens, and philosophy shifts, develops a rift, splits one population from the other . . . and a schism happens, minor or major. It's the way humankind has always proliferated. We go over the next hill, live a few hundred years, change our languages to accommodate things we never saw before - and before we know it, our cousins think we have an accent. Or we think they have a strange attitude. And we don't really understand our cousins any longer. — C.J. Cherryh
Brains and sex fight each other to control your life, and thank God brains get a head start before sex comes along. — C.J. Cherryh
Take care of him, her father had charged her. She had thought - until he wakes. But she began to see what her father had trusted to her, and how very much Sasha needed someone he could trust-
Someone as brave as her father, someone not afraid of him - no matter what. — C.J. Cherryh
What the visual media could not carry into living rooms, the general public could not long remain exercised about.
Statistically, a majority of the electorate could not or did not read complicated issues;
no pictures, no news; no news, no event; no great sympathy on the part of the public nor sustained interest from the media: safe politics for the Company. — C.J. Cherryh
What we individually deserve isn't as much as what we collectively merit. — C.J. Cherryh
When it is necessary to survive, then one cannot be brave anymore. — C.J. Cherryh
He watched the desert slip under the airship's nose, and the land roughened into highlands over which he had traveled at great cost, in great pain - dreamlike, such speed, looking down on a world where time moved more slowly, where realities were different and immediate and he had learned for a time to live. — C.J. Cherryh
Oh, man,' Azdra'ik said. 'This is what our eldest saw. This is what our legends say. Who could know, but us? — C.J. Cherryh
Trouble didn't just come in threes: it gathered passengers as it went, and crashed nastily into bystanders. — C.J. Cherryh
Watch out for a man whose enemies keep disappearing. — C.J. Cherryh
It lent a Man a certain peace of mind ... to ride through threats and terrors unhearing: it even lent a man a certain real protection, for he could not hear temptation and bad advice to be swayed by it, but it was no protection at all when power reached out with tangible results and brought down the lightning. — C.J. Cherryh
Their minds were geared to the old problems and to their own problems and their own politics. — C.J. Cherryh
I most fear stupid people. Stupid people will do anything. Truly smart people will do only what is logical for them to do. — C.J. Cherryh
Not advisable is spread thickly over this entire situation. — C.J. Cherryh
The warrior may fight for gold or for an immediate gain, or for something to take home for the winter to feed the family. The soldier is part of a more complex society. He's fighting for a group ethic of some sort. — C.J. Cherryh
Baji-naji, nand' paidhi. Fortune has a human face and bastard Chance whores drunken down your streets. — C.J. Cherryh
He had read about evil in Efanor's little book, and how it permeated the doings of Men, but he had never foud such doings evil, rather good and bad ... but none without self-interest, none he could not understand even in terms of his own will to have his way. — C.J. Cherryh
The necessity of getting up. He made it that far. Ended up with Banichi's arm around him, Banichi standing on one leg. The dowager-aiji said something rude about young men falling at her feet, and go sit down, SHE was in command of the plane. — C.J. Cherryh
Remember, constantly, that when you talk about 'tense of a subjunctive,' you're not talking about time. You're slipping through degrees of reality. — C.J. Cherryh
My name's Elai, Ellai's daughter, line of the first Cloud, the first Elly; of Pia, line of the first Jin when they made the world. And you're on my land. — C.J. Cherryh
He had no wish to be killed by a bogle in which he resolutely did not believe. — C.J. Cherryh
Nothing's hopeless except never trying. — C.J. Cherryh
I do not think any SFWA communication should come anywhere NEAR the internet. — C.J. Cherryh
A bizarre hysteria, perhaps, that point which many reached here, when anger was all that mattered. It led to self-destruction. — C.J. Cherryh
I'm not a person who stands still well. But the the earth is always in motion, and I like keeping up with it. I don't want just to exist. I want to know. I want to see. I want to understand. — C.J. Cherryh
Change happened and you thought it was forever, and immediately there were all the enemies of that change making common cause and meeting in the cloakrooms. — C.J. Cherryh
Before is the only time you own, the only before you can trust is now, and you don't even know how long before is. — C.J. Cherryh
Science fiction is a dialogue, a tennis match, in which the Idea is volleyed from one side of the net to the other. Ridiculous to say that someone 'stole' an idea: no, no, a thousand times no. The point is the volley, and how it's carried, and what statement is made by the answering 'statement.' In other words - if Burroughs initiates a time-gate and says it works randomly, and then Norton has time gates confounded with the Perilous Seat, the Siege Perilous of the Round Table, and locates it in a bar on a rainy night - do you see both the humor and the volley in the tennis match? — C.J. Cherryh