“There are many skills and maneuvers that people tend to classify as either Western or English. But the truth is horses are horses – their balance is the same, the way they move and the way in which the rider uses the aids for cueing are the same. The appearance of your clothes and tack doesn’t really change that.”

“Wobbly as I was, I felt ready for anything-in a tentative, baby-steps kind of way.”

“It's easy to talk to a horse if you understand his language. Horses stay the same from the day they are born until the day they die. They are only changed by the way people treat them.”

“What does it say about me that I'm jealous of the lives of fictional characters?”

“Idiot. I told you not to fight the horse thing.”

“There is a lot of folklore about equestrian statues, especially the ones with riders on them. There is said to be a code in the number and placement of the horse's hooves: If one of the horse's hooves is in the air, the rider was wounded in battle; two legs in the air means that the rider was killed in battle; three legs in the air indicates that the rider got lost on the way to the battle; and four legs in the air means that the sculptor was very, very clever. Five legs in the air means that there's probably at least one other horse standing behind the horse you're looking at; and the rider lying on the ground with his horse lying on top of him with all four legs in the air means that the rider was either a very incompetent horseman or owned a very bad-tempered horse.”

“Growing up on the fringe, you came to accept hard truths. Nothing was fair. the world was cold, unforgiving, and people died. it was just the way things were.”