Failure was startling, really. So startling that I hardly noticed it at all. — Jane Smiley

What truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute — for horses.

Fascination with horses predated every other single thing I knew. Before I was a mother, before I was a writer, before I knew the facts of life, before I was a schoolgirl, before I learned to read, I wanted a horse.

It is neither floating nor springing. It is power without labor, thrust without force, the very opposite of any sort of aggression, the particular physics of his anatomy, the demonstration and the effect of his personality.