THE HORSE WHISPERER
By: Nicholas Evans
"When she got up to her own classroom it was as she'd hoped, nobody else had yet come up. She got her books out of her bag, carefully concealed her cane on the floor under the desk, then lowered herself slowly onto the hard wooden seat. In fact it was so hard that by the end of the morning her stump would be throbbing with pain. But she could handle it. That kind of pain was easy." (139)
"What on earth did she think she was doing, dragging these two wounded souls across a continent in some gruesome reprise of pioneer madness?" (154)
"On this hillside, on a June day in 1876, George Armstrong Custer and more than 200 soldiers were cut to pieces by those they had sought to slaughter. THeir names were etched in the stone. Annie turned to look down the hill at the scattered white tombstones. They cast long shadows in the last pale reach of the sun." (157)
"All three - mother, daughter, and horse - were inextricably connected in pain. If he could help the horse, even a little, maybe he could help them all? What could be wrong with that? And truly, how could he walk away from such suffering?" (175)
"One of them had been reading this book that tells you what your dreams mean and she was telling the other girl how it had said if you dreamed about snakes it meant you were really obsessed by penises and the other one said, phew, that was a relief 'cause all she ever dreamed about was penises." (203)
"They were Black Angus like the herd at the Double Divide and Annie had to fight the urge to confide some knowing remark about them based on the little she'd gleaned from Tom and Frank on branding day. She rehearsed it in her head. Good lookin' cattle. No, you wouldn't say cattle. Healthy lookin' beasts? Fellas? She gave up. In all truth she had no idea if they were good, bad or flea bitten, so she kept her mouth shut and just gave the man a nod and a smile instead." (207)
"gray eyes so large they made her seem permanently surprised." (211)
"Although she'd never dream of letting her know, Annie was how she herself wanted to be when she grew up. Not exactly maybe, but it seemed natural and right that women should have careers. She liked the way all her friends knew about her mother, how successful she was and everything. She wouldn't want it any other way and though she sometimes gave Annie a hard time for not being around as much as other people's moms, if she was honest, she never felt she was missing out." (218)
"It was just that Annie was, well, so sure about everything. So extreme and purposeful. It made you want to fight her even when you agreed." (218)
"She talked without looking at him, keeping her eyes on the horses, but she knew all she saw was waht she'd seen that day, another horse and a friend both now dead. And Tom watched her talk and felt for her with the whole of his heart." (222)
"The weirdest thing, as we went down I remember thinking with all this blue sky above us and the sun shining and the snow on the trees and everything and I'm thinking, my, what a beautiful day it is." (223)
"I saw her face looking up at me, down by Gully's feet, just before the horn sounded. She looked so little, so scared. I could have saved her. I could have saved us all." (224)
"Diane always thought it was his favorite meal and he never had the heart to disabuse her." (226)
"Maybe Pilgrim even blamed himself for what happened. For why should humans think they had a monopoly on guilt?" (229)
"He now had a picture he'd wanted or as much of it as he was likely to get and it was a picture as dark and devoid of hope as he'd ever known." (229)
"Who's going to want me?"
"What, honey?"
"Whoever's going to want me? Nobody will."
"Oh Gracie, that's not true.."
"Why should they?"
"Because you're you. You're incredible. You're beautiful and you're strong. And you're the bravest person I ever met in my whole life." (263)
"When he lays his hands on them you can see all the trouble just kind of fall out of them."
"It sounds like magic," she said.
"No ma'am. It's more than magic. Magic's just tricks." (274)
"And the water tasted cool and pure and so purely of nothing that it made her want to cry." (279)
"Hence, perhaps, the motion of reality. For obligations were palpable, soundly rooted in reciprocal deeds; possibilities on the other hand were chimeras, flimsy and worthless, dangerous even." (287)
"We're just two people, that's all."
She nodded. "Who met too late." (301)
"Robert had sat squeezed between two voluminous women altos with his nose buried in his Montana guidebook while everyone around him boomed 'Nearer My God to Thee.' Which, at thirty thousand feet of course, they were." (316)
"'Annie,' Robert said. 'It's Salt Lake City. There are more Christians per square yard than in the Vatican.'" (331)
"The coyotes kept up their chorus all night. They mated for life, he told her, and were so devoted that if ever one were caught in a trap, the other would bring it food." (359)
"It was as though everything were swirling in some vast, climatic centrifuge of emotiona nd only when it stopped would she shee what it had done to them all and what was then to become of them." (365)
"Pilgrim was now a three-legged animal. An explosion waiting to happen." (368)
"The darkest house comes before the dawn." (373)
"Sometimes what seems like surrender isn't surrender at all. It's about what's going on in our hearts. About seeing clearly the way life is and accepting it and being true to it, whatever the pain, because the pain of not being true to it is far, far greater." (373)
"They asked her if she wanted to have an epidural and watch and she said absolutely not, she wanted every kind of dope they had." (404)