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C.J. Cherryh Quotes

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“He said sometimes when you're young you have to think about things, because you're forming your value-sets and you keep coming up with Data Insufficient and finding holes in your programs. So you keep trying to do a fix on your sets. And the more powerful your mind is and the more intense your concentration is, the worse damage you can do to yourself, which is why, Justin says, Alphas always have trouble and some of them go way off and out-there, and why almost all Alphas are eccentric. But he says the best thing you can do if you're too bright for your own good is what the Testers do, be aware where you got which idea, keep a tab on everything, know how your ideas link up with each other and with your deep-sets and value-sets, so when you're forty or fifty or a hundred forty and you find something that doesn't work, you can still find all the threads and pull them. But that's not real easy unless you know what your value-sets are, and most CITs don't. CITs have a trouble with not wanting to know that kind of thing. Because some of them are real eetee once you get to thinking about how they link. Especially about sex and ego-nets. Justin says inflexibility is a trap and most Alpha types are inward-turned because they process so fast they're gone and thinking before a Gamma gets a sentence out. Then they get in the habit of thinking they thought of everything, but they don't remember everything stems from input. You may have a new idea, but it stems from input somebody gave you, and that could be wrong or your senses could have been lying to you. He says it can be an equipment-quality problem or a program-quality problem, but once an Alpha takes a falsehood for true, it's a personal problem.”

PsychologySelf Awareness
Book:Cyteen
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“If your fiancé tended to come sailing in windows without notice, you didn’t have extra time to run and gather up messes. She dropped everything into the hamper and stepped into a hot, steamy shower, soap with no cloying scent, just clean. Just her again. And her eyes shut while she was standing there. She’d slip down the shower wall and go to sleep there, but she was already getting stiff. She got out, delved into the medicine cabinet for a couple of Advil and chased them down with a glass of water. Clean, clear water. A miracle. She stood watching crystal liquid swirl down the drain and thought somehow she’d never asked herself how water got that clean. She splashed it up in her face, dried her Band-Aids with a towel And went and turned on her computer. Last thing. Last defining thing – on any day.-Lois Lane”

Lois Lane
Book:Lois & Clark: A Superman Novel
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“He tried to think what to do, but when he shut his eyes to think he saw a dark tower, surrounded by goblin armies, saw war, men and goblins, a queen against a queen, not knowing how he knew that. He saw the great mirror cracked, and all the world rippled and changed like a reflection in water. Images flitted by, true or false, or what had been or what would be, he had no comprehension. What was happening in this world and the other tumbled event over event in confusion: he saw Lady Moon, in thinnest crescent, shimmering on a mountain lake. A goblin warrior stood on its dark and reedy shore, a knight whose countenance changed from fair to foul with the waxing and waning of the moon’s reflection, with never a sun between.”

Tamas
Book:The Goblin Mirror
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“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.”

ThinkingInstinctThinkCross Cultural UnderstandingGut Reaction
Book:Invader
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“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 Crissand's life. It was no reason related to that, it was no reason that either of them quite knew. Crissand 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.”

LoveFriendshipFantasy FictionEpic Fantasy
Author:C.J. Cherryh
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