C.J. Cherryh > Quotes

“A witch wind, country folk called the sudden storm that plunged Maggiar from autumn into winter, that stripped the colored leaves from forest and orchard all in a night.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Pizza, that food of sociality and good humor, had been the very thing”
― C.J. Cherryh, Explorer

“Murderers. You loose your hounds to do your work, what’s the difference?”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“His dream of last night came back, when he was wide awake, people and disaster and stones riven with light.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Pyetr’s eyes brightened when he talked about the gold. And he had said you and me, which nobody had ever said in Sasha’s memory-you and me was much rarer and much more desirable, in Sasha’s reckoning, than pearl-weeping crocodiles. Pyetr doubted the Field-thing; Sasha doubted Kiev and the gold-capped towers; but you and me was precious here and now.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Mistress got me when I was very small. I thought she was my mother when I was a baby. But she wasn’t.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Young people. They never like the working part. My daughter was like that.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“The firelight on the flat-nosed, jut-jawed profile lent it elegance, even comeliness-or the dreadful sights he had seen had made even a goblin face seem better to his eyes. He found himself glad of Azdra’ik talking to them, even longed to trust to voice, because it was alive and in this world.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Things were immediately dull once Bogdan and Tamas had ridden away. Night was worse, with no brothers bickering down the hall. And breakfast was altogether too grim and much too quiet.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Goblins came from deep and unfriendly places, they were clever and they came in armies, that was what he knew from gran’s tales. Sorcerers and wicked powers used them to fight their wars.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“This is only the beginning,” the witch in the wood said, standing beside him. “Is this someone you love? She’ll find them, every one. She’ll take them all from you, if you stand in her way. Believe what I say, believe what I say, and lend me your strength, boy, and there’s nothing we can’t do.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“There’s a woods past the second gateway. People go in and don’t come back out. My mistress said she wasn’t sure it has another side, or not always the same side, if you can’t see the path.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“She glanced past him and above, and for his part, he wanted to sit down and let the troll and the witch argue out what to do or what more they wanted with him-escape was a far, confusing enterprise, and led probably to the hands of goblins or witches, who knew?”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Why always mattered most, of questions.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“He had found his land of once upon a time, but it was all dark, everything was grim and magical things lived here, oh, yes-trolls and witches. Of gran’s stories-at least there were pine groves, and this brook which the goblins had not so far fouled. That was true. So he could still believe in her, for what little good those stories were.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Why hasn’t he seen his sister before this, is what I’d like to know, and where did he get a sister and what’s he to do with her of a sudden?”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“It beckoned to him with an elegant, beringed hand.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“He turned back the way he had been facing and thought he saw a shadow between the trees, a woman, he thought, with a cloak drawn tight about her.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Your friend’s in danger, you and your friend are in terrible danger, and you can only thank youself you found this house before my daughter found you.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“His brother longed after importance. Tamas offered what romance he could.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror

“Be at ease,” Tabini said, which surely meant it was not bad news in the offing, so he felt free to draw an easier breath. “You cannot think, nand’ paidhi, that your actions are in any sense disapproved. You should by no means seem so ill at ease.”
Did it show that badly? He tried to settle. “One hopes that this is the case, aiji-ma,” he said, “but it was a long voyage, and the aishidi’tat has seen a great deal of disturbance in the interim.”
― c.j. cherryh, Deliverer

“He was eighteen,” Uulamets said, “He was a handsome, glib boy, as helpful as you are, until I caught him at his game.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Sasha recollected smoke and fire and the terror the old man had put into him whenever he had flinched from the old man’s orders. He opened his eyes wider to the daylight and tried to drive that vision out of his eyes and the feeling out of his bones that there was something terribly dangerous and sinister about Uulamets beyond the obvious fact that he was a wizard.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“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

“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

“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