C.J. Cherryh > Quotes

“He knew that she was determined now to rescue a father who had never been anything but grief to her.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Pyetr kept his mouth firmly shut for a moment and tried to think of the way a young and credulous boy might think, who respected wizards and goblins, a boy he firmly intended to get out of this place, even if the boy persisted in being a fool.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“He had Pyetr, without whom he did not know what he would do.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“She was so calm-like a tsarina, he thought: a face like that, hands like that, feet like that, should be set off with cloth of gold and jewels; but she wore only a thin white dress with dirty sleeves.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“It somewhat gave one a queasy feeling, thinking about rusalkas, and wondering exactly in what fashion they did sustain themselves, or what exactly her appetites had been.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“You don’t believe in witches. But I might be one.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Reijiri, clearly with the agility of practice, took a boost from one of his aishid, and clambered up to stand atop the engine. The”
― C.J. Cherryh, Defiance

“Its nails were dark and long, on hands as beautiful as a woman’s, as expressive, as graceful in ironic gesture. And somehow it had gained another step without his seeing it.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“She shut her eyes, clasped her hands before her lips and nodded, as pieces of her came back, like threads of spider silk, and filled out her edges.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Doubt had always been Chernevog’s weapon.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Chernevog

“When you doubt something-I think that could hurt the spell or whatever, even when you’re as powerful as he.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“The stones in his dream echoed with drums.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“A slim, slight shadow stood there, wrapped in a dark cloak. A goblin, he thought at first blink-until the figure cast back the hood. A mere girl faced him, pale as the starlight and insubstantial as his grip on the world. She had a cleft in her chin. Would a sorcerer’s illusion add that human detail?”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Both the wizards he loved had warned him outright that loving him, that loving anything at all was dangerous to them and everything around them.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Chernevog

“The goblin turned up next to him, at the edge of the woods, making the horse nervous, watching him as if he were the object of its intention.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Know what is and it can’t work its tricks. The power of names, boy.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“If he owned a tower in the middle of a forest full of goblins, he would not leave its gates standing open or let its walls grow over with climbable vines like that.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Join us at the fire,” Azdra’ik said to Tamas. “I swear to you, I swear to you it’s rabbit and venison, nothing else. Nor has ever been. Come.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“We’re going against the queen of all goblins and you wonder whose magic is stronger?”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“You can’t get him free of her, you can’t get him free of yourself, there’s his difficulty!”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“You’re a wizard. You’ve got the power to and not do, don’t you? Certainly more than I do.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Fair turned foul and fair again, not a human beauty, but beauty all the same, constantly changing with the reelings of the moon, across the night.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“His confidence and his courage were the only assets he had ever had in life, the fact that Pyetr Kochevikov would make a try while everyone else was hesitating. For a man who had a knowledge of the odds for his only inheritance from his father, the existence of unknowables and uncertainties threaded through every situation, was a terrible revelation.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“He saw shadows move on the ceiling, like scampering cats in the rafters, strange shapes like creatures lurking and slithering and pausing again.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“The boy trusts you. He’ll fight me for you, and for a lad of his sensitivities, that’s considerable courage. But he’s quite young. He can be persuaded against his better judgment-by a plausible scoundrel. Very like my daughter. That’s why I’m patient with him. But you-having none of his sensitivities, and a rebellious and entirely selfish attitude, in which god forbid there should be anything in the entire world outside your personal understanding!-have no hesitation about taking this boy off to your feckless purposes, for that? For Kiev? A place no better than the last that tried to satisfy you, or the next, or the next. Your lacks, sir, are in yourself; and you most unfortunately carry the baggage of whatever place you find yourself. Most significantly, you pass for a man, sir, in this boy’s eyes, and I suggest you examine the responsibilities of that position!”

“And what do you pass for?” Pyetr retorted. “A wizard. A scholar. A man of learning. About what? Sitting alone out here in the woods mixing stinking potions and talking to birds and snakes!”

“If you’d had the wit to talk to that one, we’d be better off. Sit down. Stop talking nonsense.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“For a moment he looked at Bogdan, wanting desperately to believe in his safety-bit it was shameful, it was horrid. Bogdan believed in no one’s promises, and Bogdan was saying trust and believe that the queen had no wicked purposes.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“If he had to believe in the rusalka he reckoned he was morally entitled to believe in Sasha Misurov-in Sasha he thought, much before Uulamets.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“It was the voice on the tower stairs. It was the voice out of his boyish nightmares, the voice drowned in thunder and in rain and sealed behind stone.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Yuri had run up looking for him and Bogdan as if nothing else were going on in the yard: Bogdan was busy at the stables, in the deepest throes of packing; but Tamas had excused himself and come for Yuri’s sake; and, faced with changes that would pass without him, was suddenly beset with apprehensions.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror