C.J. Cherryh > Quotes

“It was a scientific success, bringing back data enough to keep the analysts busy for years… but there was no glib, slick way to explain the full meaning of its observations in layman’s terms. In public relations the mission was a failure; the public, seeking to understand on their own terms, looked for material benefit, treasure, riches, dramatic findings.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Downbelow Station

“That’s exactly what’s going on: that a handful of individuals too few to make a party and incapable of winning votes in debate thinks it can wear down the majority by terror…it’s the peace under assault, it’s our freedom under assault, and every one of these attacks, no matter how motivated, makes the lawful rest of us that much more certain we don’t want killers in charge of our lives and damned well don’t want their advice on how to conduct our affairs.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Cyteen

“And I still like you, damn you. You don’t shake one of us, you don’t fling our liking away because your man'chi says otherwise, you can’t get rid of us when we like you, Banichi, you’re stuck with me, so make the best of it.”
There wasn’t a clear translation for like. It meant a preference for salad greens or iced drinks. But love was worse. Banichi would never forgive him that.
[…]
Breath failed him. Self-control did. He flung it all out. “Banichi, I’d walk a thousand miles to have a kind word from you. I’d give you the shirt from my back if you needed it; if you were in trouble, I’d carry you that thousand miles. What do you call that? Foolish?”
[…]“That would be very difficult for you.”
“So is liking atevi.” That got out before he censored it. […]
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m not joking. God, I’m not joking. We have to like somebody, we’re bound to like somebody, or we die, Banich, we outright die. Like, like, like–get off the damned word, Banichi. I cross that trench every day. Can’t you cross it once? Can’t you cross to where I am, just once, to know what I think?”
― C.J. Cherryh, Foreigner

“We value you,” she said. “Our compass. Our true lodestone of virtue.”
“One is glad of some usefulness, aiji-ma.” He was not comforted. The old spark had entered the dowager’s eye this morning, ever since that turn of events in the camp. Ilisidi in this mode was dangerous. Lethal.
And sometimes frighteningly honest. She reached out a hand and touched his arm.
“Protect the truth, paidhi-ji. Do not swerve from that. We wondered when, not if, you would come to consult us about the future.”
His face still burned.
“And what future, aiji-ma? One regrets not to know, but one has no understanding at all.”
“Nor will you. Nor can you. Nor can we. We will know when we see Tatiseigi.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Destroyer

“Thee will not appoint thyself my conscience, Nhi Vanye. Thee is not qualified. And thee is not entitled.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Well of Shiuan

“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 Faded Sun Trilogy

“Atevi could laugh at it. Humans could. Humor at the most outrageous hate-mongering did everyone good, and poked holes in assumptions that otherwise would lie unventilated.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Foreigner

“That’s why the forms matter. People have to see things done by the rules. We’ve got to make people feel safe again and make them believe that compromises are going to be binding.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Regenesis

“Machigi had been practicing the old Momentum theory of leadership: start a war, keep everyone facing the enemy—and avoid discussing domestic problems for another decade.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Betrayer

“Murder has been done for far lesser things than thrones. Most dangerous when the possessors of thrones forget how they came by them.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Fortress in the Eye of Time

“That’s the trouble getting involved in politics, nobody wears a name badge!”
― C.J. Cherryh, Chanur's Legacy

“There was no hurry. There was nowhere in particular to go; and everywhere, of course. <> was now awake, lazily considering galactic motion and the likely center of that ancient supernova. Such star-deaths begat descendants.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Alternate Realities

“It had been a parting-gift, from a man he had begun to love, one he had wished had been his father. But in Morgaine's service there were only partings - and deaths.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Exile's Gate

“A lot of new money— paid out in the least educated provinces, to elect fools who’ll take orders, who can only see ways to entrench themselves and make sure contracts go to the right companies. Some of these fools are evident, and shrewd country-folk keep voting them in because the powers in their districts might buy one ten times worse and far more subtle.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Deep Beyond: Cuckoo's Egg / Serpent's Reach

“What is, is, and that's what we know. What will be is a fine pursuit, but fraught with too damned many possibilities. Fortune-telling, I tell you, is not what it's surmised to be.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Fortress of Dragons

“The world was getting scary. That was the truth. And it was moving fast. And it wasn’t a good morning. Not at all.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Betrayer

“Aiji-ma, your whereabouts was my own guess, unfounded, probably entirely inaccurate. One can only apologize, and urge—”
“A guess, indeed.”
“One unfounded on any particular information.”
“A very clever guess, paidhi.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Pretender

“damn, if we die, we die moving, don’t we, not sitting still and letting our lives fade out?”
― C.J. Cherryh, Destroyer

“Humans are mad with curiosity. So my elders taught me, and I think that they were right. It will not have been in your hands without your scholars looking into it; and it is even possible that they will have learned what it is. Being only kel'en myself, I am not entitled to know that. Perhaps you know. I do not want to.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Shon'jir

“So it fed him his courage back. He drew a deeper breath, reassessed himself and the pathetic ridiculousness, the childishness of the things stored in comp, the nature of the sealed compartments and the relics he lived among. So if she thought that, so if she felt that, then she would not laugh—and the others, these strangers they went to meet—she could handle. As long as she was with him; as long as she found nothing humorous in a man trying to be what he was not—who listened to voices instead of family, who had never had the strength to clear out all the debris of the past; who kept a secret voice that talked to a child who should have long ago grown up; excruciating things. A lifetime of illusions.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Merchanter's Luck

“God help fools and tourists.”
― C. J. Cherryh

“Creator Gods, if you made that, you must've had something in mind. But what?”
― C.J. Cherryh, Chanur's Homecoming

“They were all human, but in spite of the DNA . . . the differences became profound. Their respective worlds were contained and isolated from one another.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Alliance Rising

“God—had it happened? Was it true?
Had he just lost not only the words, but all the time between?
Or was this the greatest case of test anxiety in history?
God.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Visitor

“I will give you the hearts of your enemies.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Chanur's Homecoming

“When you begin to prefer old quarrels to new opportunities, you have begun to die, Tati-ji! You have begun to sink, forgotten, into the slough of history. We, we, on the other hand, fully intend to live forever!”
― C.J. Cherryh, Destroyer

“It was the moment of shadow, of half-real things.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Sword and Sorceress II

“Honesty," Machigi drawled in his thickest Marid accent, "is a truly frightening power. He has it. Do you dare, Giti-sa? Do you dare deal with a man who will not lie to you? He will tell the truth to you, and he will tell it to me, and to Lord Bregani and to the aiji-dowager. So get your story straight and be very honest in that list-making. You would not want to leave something out that could come back to haunt you.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Divergence

“You don’t get much view on a ship, Elene had said once, trying to explain to him. Not what you’d think. It’s the being there; the working of it; the feel of moving through what could surprise you at any moment. It’s being a dust speck in that scale and pushing your way through all that Empty on your own terms, that no world can do and nothing spinning around one. It’s doing that, and knowing all the time old goblin Deep is just the other side of the metal you’re leaning on. You stationers like your illusions. And world folk, blue-skyers, don’t even know what real is.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Downbelow Station

“Creator Gods, if you made that, you must've had something in mind. But what?”
― C. J. Cherryh