Rusalka Quotes

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

“Don't mourn might-have-beens . Magic can't work backwards , only forward . I taught you better than that .”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Fire leapt up the shattered tower and at places on the roof, fire spread on the winds of Uulamets’ intention-wind rushing toward the house.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“They could see the towers through the woods, a huge house that might have graced some great city, sitting instead in desolation, weathered gray as the barren trees around it.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“One bully’s like another, Pyetr thought now bitterly. Never satisfied, never satisfied, no matter how much you give them.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Isn’t it foolish to fight me, when all I want is to give you everything you want? Listen to me, that’s all.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“If it had taken Pyetr’s shape, Sasha thought, trembling now it was gone, if it did that, if it was one of their enemy’s creatures and not the vodyanoi’s, then their enemy knew who Pyetr was.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

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

“You’d better make up your mind to count him gone, because he’s your weakness, boy. You’re going to flinch when you shouldn’t, because you’re too weak, and the one favor you can do me for the rest of this hike, boy! is to watch the woods around you, look at the leaves, think about the leaves and nothing but leaves, hear me? Or if your friend is alive you’ll destroy every chance we have to do anything for anybody.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“You should have lived with old Malenkova. Crazy as a loon and mean as winter.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“You’d have been off if you had had somebody like Pyetr. You wouldn’t have been lonely all your life and somebody would have liked you.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“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

“You’re in Chernevog’s forest and you’re going the way everything here goes: his way.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Nothing’s hopeless except never trying.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“Pyetr Illitch, you’re certainly someone’s; tonight I really wonder whose.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“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

“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

“A rusalka is a wish. A wish not to die. A wish for revenge. That describes my daughter.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

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

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

“Eveshka’s assault on the senses set a man to thinking about home, wherever that was, about modest little houses and cozy firesides with bread baking.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“I wonder what happened to this Kavi Chernevog. I wonder where he is.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka

“I put nothing past Kavi Chernevog.”
― 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

“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

“For the rest of his life he feared he was going to dream about things he did not understand.”
― 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

“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

“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

“She was indeed hardly more than Sasha’s age. He would never introduce to Sasha to some of the company he kept or show Sasha some of the things he had seen-he could not say why, except it would embarrass both of them; and she was so young, she was so like Sasha, he found himself imagining her expression as offended innocence-and her pursuit of him less attraction than vengeful disgust for a scoundrel.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Rusalka