C. J. Cherryh Quotes

There was a certain wisdom in doing little, when one was obliged to act in ignorance.

What we individually deserve isn't as much as what we collectively merit.

Clark. Superman. She loved two men. It was extraordinary how alike and how different they were.-Lois Lane

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.

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.

Intimidation needs response, bait needs biting. If you do neither, the attacker has nothing to build on.

He had no wish to be killed by a bogle in which he resolutely did not believe.

When it is necessary to survive, then one cannot be brave anymore.

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.

Trust was a word you couldn't translate. But the atevi had fourteen words for betrayal.

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.

Brains and sex fight each other to control your life, and thank God brains get a head start before sex comes along.

A fine lady she weren't, oh, but a damn fine woman and a brave one....

Women did such things and went on doing them while the sun died because in all of women's lives there were so many moments that would kill the mind if one thought about them, which would suck the heart and the life out of one, and engrave lines in the face and put gray in the hair if ever one let one's mind work; but there was in the rhythm and the fascination of the stitches a loss of thought, a void, a blank, that was only numbers and not even that, because the mind did not need to count, the fingers did, the length of a thread against the finger measured evenly as a ruler could divide it, the slight difference in tension sensed finely as a machine could sense, the exact number of stitches keeping pattern without really the need to count, but something inward and regular as the beat of a heart, as the slow passing of time which could be frozen in such acts, or speeded past.

Flying was no cure for want of sleep. The brain wanted time to recycle: when it became all one long, uninterrupted day, the ability to keep going and to keep thinking was no warrant it was healty even for Superman.-Superman