Life & Wisdom Quote by C. J. Cherryh

Cherryh’s line snaps trade out of its comforting, tangible mythology. We like to imagine commerce as a choreography of ships, crates, and contracts - a world of things. She insists the real cargo is knowledge: who wants what, when they’ll pay, how fast you can deliver, which risk is lurking in the fine print. The “goods” are almost props, inert matter waiting for a signal. Until that signal arrives, a warehouse is less a storage space than a paused transaction.

The intent is corrective, but it’s also a quiet rebuke to anyone who romanticizes production while ignoring the networks that make production legible and valuable. Cherryh, a science fiction writer with a longtime fascination for interdependence, understands how systems run on asymmetries: the trader who knows first wins; the worker who only touches the object often sees least of the story. The subtext is power. Information decides pricing, access, scarcity, and urgency - the levers that turn a pile of goods into “inventory” or “surplus,” “necessity” or “dead stock.”

The phrasing does extra work. “Sit” personifies goods as passive, almost stubborn, while “moves” gives information kinetic authority. It’s a neat inversion: we picture forklifts moving boxes, but the real motion is invisible - market signals, rumors, data, relationships, trust. Read in a contemporary key, it’s also a warning about who controls the pipes. In an economy where platforms, logistics algorithms, and real-time surveillance coordinate demand, the winners aren’t always the ones who make things. They’re the ones who see the map.