He watched the desert slip under the airship's nose, and the land roughened into highlands over which he had traveled at great cost, in great pain - dreamlike, such speed, looking down on a world where time moved more slowly, where realities were different and immediate, and he had learned for a time to live.

— C.J. Cherryh

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

Is that the end... of all the races and civilizations, and the dreams of the world, to be able to leave a few stones buried beneath the sands, to tell the Dark that we were here?

— C.J. Cherryh

It lent a Man a certain peace of mind... to ride through threats and terrors unfearing: it even lent a man a certain real protection, for he could not hear temptation and bad advice to be swayed by it, but it was no protection at all when power reached out with tangible results and brought down the lightning.

— C.J. Cherryh

Science fiction is a dialogue, a tennis match, in which the Idea is volleyed from one side of the net to the other. Ridiculous to say that someone 'stole' an idea: no, no, a thousand times no. The point is the volley, and how it's carried, and what statement is made by the answering 'statement.' In other words — if Burroughs initiates a time-gate and says it works randomly, and then Norton has time gates confounded with the Perilous Seat, the Siege Perilous of the Round Table, and locates it in a bar on a rainy night — do you see both the humor and the volley in the tennis match?

— C.J. Cherryh

Tahini was at least canny enough in the differences between ate vi 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 Paridhi, come up with the right forecast of human behavior because he didn't come with the right hard wiring. Average people didn't analyze what they thought: they thought, and half of it was gut reaction.

— C.J. Cherryh

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

— C.J. Cherryh

There was love, a reliable and real love grown in a handful of days, and Tristan did not know why it was: friendship had happened to both of them, on the sudden, completely aside from Tristan's both endangering and saving Croissant's life. It was no reason related to that, it was no reason that either of them quite knew. Croissant had simply risen on his horizon like the sun of his banner...and that was that.... They were together, and there was a great deal right with the day simply in that.

— C.J. Cherryh

The world was so beautiful, and there was so much of it: he could gaze forever at the wonder of leaves and not see them all: could inhale the wind and not smell all its scents, hear the sounds of men and horses and not hear all the sounds of the woods, and taste the thousand flavors in stale water and still find it wonderful... because it was not the darkness.

— C.J. Cherryh

Trade isn't about goods. Trade is about information. Goods sit in the warehouse until information moves them.

— C.J. Cherryh