C.J. Cherryh > Quotes

“There was never malice in his jokes. Pyetr and murder were unthinkable together.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“He ventured into the security station to fill in his staff on what he’d learned, and Banichi was there, looking like death.
“You, nadi,” he said to Banichi, “ought to be asleep.”
“A superfluous habit,” Banichi said. “Conducive to ignorance.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Precursor

“I’ve wanted someone like you, boy, for much longer than you’ve been alive.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“But once out of Tabini's immediate presence the spell was broken, the excitement ebbed, and adrenaline was shifting from second-to-second performance to the raw fear that he had a human situation on his hands and that he'd given atevi far too much information.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Invader

“You’d better make up your mind to count him gone, because he’s your weakness, boy. You’re going to flinch when you shouldn’t, because you’re too weak, and the one favor you can do me for the rest of this hike, boy! is to watch the woods around you, look at the leaves, think about the leaves and nothing but leaves, hear me? Or if your friend is alive you’ll destroy every chance we have to do anything for anybody.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Are just the two of us going to go up and knock on the queen’s gate and say Shame on you, or what are we going to do, for the god’s sake?”

“Banish her,” Ela said. “Unweave her spells.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Isn’t it foolish to fight me, when all I want is to give you everything you want? Listen to me, that’s all.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“You’d have been off if you had had somebody like Pyetr. You wouldn’t have been lonely all your life and somebody would have liked you.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“He was unlucky, was Sasha Misurov; and if aunt Ilenka’s grandmother’s churn was broken and the butter was gone and Pyetr Kochevikov and his rowdy, well-born friends made a shambles of the tavern yard, why, look to Sasha’s luck, the more since he was standing there like a fool”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Above all, keep power out of the hands of people you would want to protect. Out of a hundred thirty-three years of living, love, that’s the highest wisdom I can come to”
― C.J. Cherryh, Cyteen

“They could see the towers through the woods, a huge house that might have graced some great city, sitting instead in desolation, weathered gray as the barren trees around it.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Oh, I’ve served you more faithfully than you know-certainly more faithfully than you deserve. Now he’s mine. By the terms you yourself proposed, he’s mine. So begone, Ylena!”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“He tried to think what to do, but when he shut his eyes to think he saw a dark tower, surrounded by goblin armies, saw war, men and goblins, a queen against a queen, not knowing how he knew that. He saw the great mirror cracked, and all the world rippled and changed like a reflection in water. Images flitted by, true or false, or what had been or what would be, he had no comprehension. What was happening in this world and the other tumbled event over event in confusion: he saw Lady Moon, in thinnest crescent, shimmering on a mountain lake. A goblin warrior stood on its dark and reedy shore, a knight whose countenance changed from fair to foul with the waxing and waning of the moon’s reflection, with never a sun between.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“His body longed to go. He saw that Bogdan already stood there, among the dead-eyed courtiers.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“What had happened this side of the mountains?”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“He saw her dusky face, dreadful and beautiful at once, with eyes of murky gold. Her braids were bound with silver, her necklaces were silver and gold, her long-nailed fingers were ringed and jeweled and her arms were braceleted from wrist to elbow.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Pyetr Kochevikov believed in human weakness far more than he believed in wizards, human weakness being everywhere evident and sorcery being a matter, like the Little Old Man who should ward the stables, of people’s absolute will to believe other people’s responsibility.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“They were riding in the sun, and Bogdan asked him-asked him something Tamas was sure-but distressingly enough, he could no longer remember the exact sound of Bogdan’s voice; or see Bogdan’s face except in shadow. Sunlight streamed about them, blindingly bright. Petals drifted down in clouds from the orchards, a blizzard of dying flowers.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“If it had taken Pyetr’s shape, Sasha thought, trembling now it was gone, if it did that, if it was one of their enemy’s creatures and not the vodyanoi’s, then their enemy knew who Pyetr was.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“The house rightfully was Eveshka’s, Pyetr certainly was, and that left Sasha Misurov lately feeling all his own happiness so fragile a misaimed wish could shatter it.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Chernevog

“Anger gathered out of that dark place in him, a muddle of desire and rage, regarding the creature that had its hand on him-he gave a shudder and knew at the same time it was the ghost, a woman’s ghost, who had lead a foolish, foolish knowledge of this creature. He could not move, he could hardly breathe collectedly.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Your uncle is a bully,” Pyetr said. “I am a profligate, a gambler, a liar, and occasionally a person of bad character, but I do swear to you, I have never been a bully, and you insist to make me one. Look me in the face, boy!”

Sasha looked up, stopped, startled as a rabbit.

“Good,” Pyetr said. “Say it again, about horses.”

“I don’t want to talk about the horses, Pyetr Illitch!”

“Then accept my deep apology, young sir.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Why?" Lee asked after a moment. "Why do you make such a bargain?"
"For the going," said Ras very softly. "The going itself is our hire. Use us wisely, human sen'en, for we are a sharp sword, to part the Dark for you. So we did for the regul, I have heard, giving them many worlds. And when we have gone far enough, and the tether strains...bid us good-bye, and be wiser that the regul. We are the Face that Looks Outward. We are makers of paths, walkers on the wind; and the going itself...is the hire for which we have always served."
Boaz pressed her lips together, thinking for one cold moment on the dead worlds, about which human councils would have to know, the course of mri homeworlds, destroyed beneath the mri in fear, fears which had to come to former wielders of the Sword: dread that mri might serve others, one's near neighbors. Fear. Fear had killed the worlds between.
To use the mri, one had to play the Game, to cast them from the hand and let them go.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Kutath

“He shut his eyes and looked away, and had to look back, at the poles, and the dreadful skulls. He felt cold all over, and his heart was thumping from shocks.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“The lady leaned forward, and rested ghostly hands on his shoulders. He felt the chill even through armor. And touched ghostly lips to his ever so gently.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“I put nothing past Kavi Chernevog.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“The slide was a roaring in his ears and every handhold moved with him, slipping and tumbling as he went, down and down into choking dust.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“He’s my enemy. And I need one. I need a good, strong enemy to gather up the people who wish I didn’t exist,”
― C.J. Cherryh, Regenesis

“This close to the queen’s domains, nothing comes by accident. You-and I. Your assumption that you are not the queen’s may be true-or false.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“The goblin watched them make a fire, the goblin watched them make breakfast, the goblin watched them eat it, and Tamas glowered at it. His head was throbbing, his eyes felt full of sand, and only motion kept his mind from straying down the same unpleasant and useless paths it had followed all night.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror