C.J. Cherryh > Quotes

“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