C.J. Cherryh > Quotes

“Ignorance killed the cat; curiosity was framed!”
― C. J. Cherryh

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage--as long as you edit brilliantly.”
― 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, Fortress of Eagles

“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

“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, Defender

“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, The Betrayal

“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, Invader

“Watch out for a man whose enemies keep disappearing.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Deceiver

“Trouble didn’t just come in threes: it gathered passengers as it went, and crashed nastily into bystanders.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Forge of Heaven

“I would suggest that you remember she is old because some of her enemies are dead.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Inheritor

“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, Fortress of Owls

“Is that the end," asked Melein, "of all the races and the 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, The Faded Sun Trilogy

“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, The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh

“There was a certain wisdom in doing little, when one was obliged to act in ignorance.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Fortress of Eagles

“He said sometimes when you're young you have to think about things, because you're forming your value-sets and you keep coming up with Data Insufficient and finding holes in your programs. So you keep trying to do a fix on your sets. And the more powerful your mind is and the more intense your concentration is, the worse damage you can do to yourself, which is why, Justin says, Alphas always have trouble and some of them go way off and out-there, and why almost all Alphas are eccentric. But he says the best thing you can do if you're too bright for your own good is what the Testers do, be aware where you got which idea, keep a tab on everything, know how your ideas link up with each other and with your deep-sets and value-sets, so when you're forty or fifty or a hundred forty and you find something that doesn't work, you can still find all the threads and pull them.

But that's not real easy unless you know what your value-sets are, and most CITs don't. CITs have a trouble with not wanting to know that kind of thing. Because some of them are real eetee once you get to thinking about how they link. Especially about sex and ego-nets.

Justin says inflexibility is a trap and most Alpha types are inward-turned because they process so fast they're gone and thinking before a Gamma gets a sentence out. Then they get in the habit of thinking they thought of everything, but they don't remember everything stems from input. You may have a new idea, but it stems from input somebody gave you, and that could be wrong or your senses could have been lying to you. He says it can be an equipment-quality problem or a program-quality problem, but once an Alpha takes a falsehood for true, it's a personal problem.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Cyteen

“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

“What we individually deserve isn't as much as what we collectively merit.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Fortress in the Eye of Time

“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, The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh

“Intimidation needs response, bait needs biting. If you do neither, the attacker has nothing to build on.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Visitor

“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, Invader

“When it is necessary to survive, then one cannot be brave anymore.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Gate of Ivrel

“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, Cyteen

“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, Peacemaker

“Clark. Superman. She loved two men. It was extraordinary how alike and how different they were.-Lois Lane”
― C.J. Cherryh, Lois & Clark: A Superman Novel

“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, The Kif Strike Back

“Trust was a word you couldn't translate. But the atevi had fourteen words for betrayal.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Foreigner

“He had no wish to be killed by a bogle in which he resolutely did not believe.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“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

“Trade isn't about goods. Trade is about information. Goods sit in the warehouse until information moves them.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Chanur's Legacy

“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, Fortress of Ice