She Had Some Horses Quotes

But what captured him was a light in the river
folding open and open
blood, heart and stones
shimmering like the Milky Way. ~ Joy Harjo

The woman hangs from the 13th floor window crying for
the lost beauty of her own life. She sees the
sun falling west over the grey plane of Chicago.
She thinks she remembers listening to her own life
break loose, as she falls from the 13th floor
window on the east side of Chicago, or as she
climbs back up to claim herself again. ~ Joy Harjo

Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you. ~ Joy Harjo

Oh, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash.
You have gutted me but I gave you the knife.
You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire. ~ Joy Harjo

Moonlight

I know when the sun is in China
because the night shining other-light
crawls into my bed. She is moon.
Her eyes slit and yellow she is the last
one out of a dingy bar in Albuquerque -
Fourth Street, or from similar avenues
in Hong Kong. Where someone else has also
awakened, the night thrown back and asked,
'where is the moon, my lover'?
And from here I always answer in my dreaming,
'the last time I saw her was in the arms
of another sky'. ~ Joy Harjo

Vision

The rainbow touched down
'somewhere in the Rio Grande,'
we said. And saw the light of it
from your mother's house in Isleta.
How it curved down between earth
and the deepest sky to give us horses
of color
horses that were within us all of this time
but we didn't see them because
we wait for the easiest vision
to save us.

In Isleta the rainbow was a crack
in the universe. We saw the barest
of all life that is possible.
Bright horses rolled over
and over the dusking sky.
I heard the thunder of their beating
hearts. Their lungs hit air
and sang. All the colors of horses
formed the rainbow,
and formed us
watching them. ~ Joy Harjo

Nothing ever stays the same, whether it be poems or humans. ~ Joy Harjo

I can't do anything
but talk to the wind,
to the moon
but cry out goddamn goddamn
to stones
and to other deathless voices
that I hope will carry
us all through. ~ Joy Harjo

At eighteen, she already looks like a woman of sorrows and as her breaths start becoming shorter, tired of looking over her shoulder, she only wants to get away from this city where no one can fathom her love- boundless and profane and real, like her skin and her lips and the insides of her thighs. She knows she can smile, smell like the others. Her skin would bleed too if pricked and yet this reality does not belong to the ones sleeping on the platform floor; this reality is hers and her alone. Thus when she puts the mirror back, she rummages in her handbag, searching for that thing called identity: some of it lost somewhere in the railway colony she had just left behind, some in Sudhanshu's left jacket pocket, the rest of it scattered here around broken teacups on railings, totally aberrant and arbitrary. ~ Kunal Sen

Astonishingly, at some point, a sputtering torch was thrust into her hands. Alma did not see who gave it to her. She had never before been entrusted with fire. The torch spit sparks and sent chunks of flaming tar spinning into the air behind her as she bolted across the cosmos-the only body in the heavens who was not held to a strict elliptical path. Nobody stopped her. She was a comet. She did not know that she was not flying. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Lucien expected to find Horatia somewhere in the hall, but it was his mother who was lying in wait for him. She looked more dangerous than a cobra nestled in a basket.
"I should like a private word with you, Lucien."
Her tone did not bode well. It was too close to the one she used to lure him into a false sense of security before he was paddled as a child. He was well beyond his paddling years, but should his mother entertain such thoughts again he would most assuredly escape out the nearest window or door before she could get her hands on him.
He'd often wondered if perhaps there was some secret pamphlet that a mother received upon the birth of her first child that bore instructions on how to instill fear in one's child with only a look. If there was, his mother had been a quick study. Perhaps she had written the latest edition.

-His Wicked Seduction ~ Lauren Smith

She saw at last that her strange son was fired by some purpose which he would carry out or die. Seeing that, she finally currendered--the first casualty of the Revolution in Virginia. In so far as she herself realized, the sacrifice was made for George Wahington, but subconsciously she made it for his cause--just as unaware and obeying by blind instinct the laws of her nature, she had made him to begin with out of stuff that had been in the wearving a thousand years. ~ Nancy Byrd Turner

Sometimes life could be astonishingly efficient in dispensing mortifications. In the space of a minute, she would be exposed before three male visitors to be both freakishly tall and an abominably poor sculptor. What would come next? Perhaps her father would invite the men to count her freckles, one by one. They'd be here until moonrise.
Suddenly, Bramwell was at her side.
"This?" he asked, touching a finger to the model's edge.
She cringed, wishing she could deny it. "Yes, thank you."
As he retrieved the model from the shelf, she stole glances at him out of the corner of her eye. She had to admit, the Rycliff title suited him. Give the man a mace and a chain mail vest, and she could easily have mistaken him for a medieval warrior, squeezed through some rocky gap in the centuries to emerge in modern day. From the sheer size of him, large and solid all over, to that squared jaw, shadowed with a day's or more growth of whiskers. He moved with more power than grace, and he wore his dark hair long, tied back at his nape with a bit of leather cord. And the way he'd looked at her just before that kiss-as though he would devour her, and she would enjoy it-was straight from the Dark Ages.
As he presented the crumbling mess of sun-dried clay and pasted-on moss, Susanna fought the urge to blow dust off the thing. Evidently the maids couldn't reach this shelf, either.
"Isn't it clever?" Her father took the model from Bramwell's hands and held it up. "Susann ~ Tessa Dare

She had seen Holden on the newsfeeds and reports. At the beginning of the war between Mars and the Belt, he had been the most important man in the solar system, and the celebrity, while it had waxed and waned over the years, had never gone away. James Holden was an icon. For some, he was the symbol of the triumph of the single ship over governments and corporations. For others, he was an agent of chaos who started wars and threatened stability in the name of ideological purity. But whatever people thought he meant, there was no question that he was important. He was the man who'd saved Earth from the protomolecule. He was the man who'd brought down Mao-Kwikowski. Who'd made the first contact with the alien artifact and opened the gates that led to a thousand different worlds. In person, he looked different ~ James S.A. Corey

Why could he not have chosen some other woman? Why Avelina? But he knew why. It was because she had seemed good and kind and had expressed her thoughts without any false pride or pretense. He had admired her forthrightness and her compassion. And although he had never thought of a wife with strong opinions was a good thing, he actually found he liked her opinions-or at least admired her for having them. He wanted to get to know her, to know everything that was in her heart. He wanted to marry her and, surprising even himself, to love her. ~ Melanie Dickerson

If she had seen his face when, safe in his own room, he looked at the picture of a severe and rigid young lady, with a good deal of hair, who appeared to be gazing darkly into futurity, it might have thrown some light upon the subject, especially when he turned off the gas, and kissed the picture in the dark. ~ Louisa May Alcott

There are other ways around it, she had added with such quiet venom. We might not be able to deal with him, but there are some friends that I made across the sea ... ~ Sarah J. Maas

Anything else you want to know? Dental records, fingerprints? Retinal scan?"
"Urine sample would work."
She rolled her eyes. "What cup you want me to use?"
He was intrigued by her comebacks and the fact that she didn't appear angry over his questioning and word choice. "Does anything faze you?"
"I fight people for a living. Do you honestly think peeing in a cup is going to frighten me?"
She had a point… providing she wasn't lying about her occupation.
Without a word, Aidan pulled a glass out of his cabinet and handed it to her.
Her jaw dropped. "You've got to be kidding me? You really want a urine sample?"
He actually smiled at her question. "Not hardly, but I thought you might be thirsty. The drinks are in the fridge."

For once he saw relief in her gaze before she went and poured herself a glass of milk. "Thanks for showing some mercy."
"Yeah," he said bitterly. "Just remember to return the favor."
"Is that supposed to mean something?"
He shrugged. "Just in my experience, all people do is take. None of them give a damn about helping someone else."
"And sometimes people can surprise you."
"Yeah. You're right. I'm constantly amazed by the unprovoked treachery they're capable of."
She shook her head. "Wow, you arejaded.(Leta & Aidan) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Eccolo!" he exclaimed.

At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell out of the wood. Light and beauty enveloped her. She had fallen on to a little open terrace, which was covered with violets from end to end.

"Courage!" cried her companion, now standing some six feet above. "Courage and love."

She did not answer. From her feet the ground sloped sharply into view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems, collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.

Standing at its brink, like a swimmer who prepares, was the good man. But he was not the good man that she had expected, and he was alone.

George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her… ~ E.M. Forster

She felt faintly embarrassed by the sheer profusion of things she had for putting in baths, but she was for some reason incapable of passing any chemist's or herb shop without going in to be seduced by some glass-stoppered bottle of something blue or green or orange or oily that was supposed to restore the natural balance of some vague substance she didn't even know she was supposed to have in her pores. ~ Douglas Adams

She was not stunned, the way I was. In some strange way she was gleeful, as if this was what she had been expecting for some time and now she'd been proven right. ~ Margaret Atwood

It was her acceptance that brought him back to sanity. This woman was not in a trance; she was offering herself freely because she felt his raging need, because she trusted him to stop before he hurt her, before he killed her.
Mikhail's tongue lapped across her breast, closed the wound. He lifted his head, his dark eyes still glowing with the beast, the taste of her in his mouth, on his lips. He swore softly, bitterly, his self-loathing total. She was under his protection. He had never hated himself or his kind more. She had freely given of herself and he had taken selfishly, the beast in him so strong he had given in to the ecstasy of uniting with one's lifemate.
He gathered her limp body to him, cradled her in his arms. "You will not die, Raven." He was furious with himself. Had he done this on purpose? In some dark corner of his mind, had he wanted this to happen? He would try to find the answer to the question at a later date. Right now she needed blood, and she needed it fast.
"Stay with me, little one. I remained in this world because of you. You will have to be strong for both of us. Can you hear me, Raven? Do not leave me. I can make you happy. I know I can. ~ Christine Feehan

That New Year I was invited to stay with one of my old school buddies, Sam Sykes, at his house on the far northwestern coast of Sutherland, in Scotland.
It is as wild and rugged a place as anywhere on earth, and I love it there.
It also happens to boast one of my favorite mountains in the world, Ben Loyal, a pinnacle of rock and steep heather that overlooks a spectacular estuary. So I did not need much encouraging to go up to Sam's and climb.
This time up there, I was to meet the lady who would change my life forever; and I was woefully ill-prepared for the occasion.
I headed up north primarily to train and climb. Sam told me he had some other friends coming up for New Year. I would like them, he assured me.
Great. As long as they don't distract me from training, I thought to myself. I had never felt more distant from falling in love. I was a man on a mission. Everest was only two months away.
Falling in love was way off my radar.
One of Sam's friends was this young girl called Shara. As gentle as a lamb, beautiful and funny--and she seemed to look at me so warmly.
There was something about this girl. She just seemed to shine in all she did. And I was totally smitten, at once.
All I seemed to want to do was hang out with her, drink tea, chat, and go for nice walks.
I tried to fight the feeling by loading up my backpack with rocks and heavy books, then going off climbing on my own. But all I could think about was this beautiful ~ Bear Grylls

I think," said Dominique firmly, "that he is the most revolting person I've ever met." "Oh, now, really?" "Do you care for that sort of unbridled arrogance? I don't know what one could say for him, unless it's that he's terribly good-looking, if that matters." "Good-looking? Are you being funny, Dominique?" Kiki Holcombe saw Dominique being stupidly puzzled for once. And Dominique realized that what she saw in his face, what made it the face of a god to her, was not seen by others; that it could leave them indifferent; that what she had thought to be the most obvious, inconsequential remark was, instead, a confession of something within her, some quality not shared by others. ~ Ayn Rand

The first question sobbed out by his choking voice, oppressed with emotion, was--
"Where is she?"
They led him to the room where his mother sat. They had told her of her son's acquittal, and now she was laughing, and crying, and talking, and giving way to all those feelings which she had restrained with such effort during the last few days. They brought her son to her, and she threw herself upon his neck, weeping there. He returned her embrace, but looked around, beyond. Excepting his mother, there was no one in the room but the friends who had entered with him.
"Eh, lad!" she said, when she found voice to speak. "See what it is to have behaved thysel! I could put in a good word for thee, and the jury could na go and hang thee in the face of th' character I gave thee. Was na it a good thing they did na keep me from Liverpool? But I would come; I knew I could do thee good, bless thee, my lad. But thou'rt very white, and all of a tremble."

He kissed her again and again, but looking round as if searching for some one he could not find, the first words he uttered were still--
"Where is she? ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Margaret had close links with Geneva where she had spent some years as a student while her parents had been wardens of the Quaker Hostel there and where she had gone back as secretary to Gilbert Murray. ~ James Meade

Today, it felt like time should be measured by how much of the future she had left, and needed to be counted forward. She felt proud listening, as if somehow Jonathan Parish's speech reflected on her, as if she could take credit for some part of it, for him. ~ Michael Stein

"She (Minnie Ruth Solomon) was unusual because even though I knew her family was as poor as ours, nothing she said or did seemed touched by that. Or by prejudice. Or by anything the world said or did. It was as if she had something inside her that somehow made all that not count. I fell in love with her some the first time we ever talked, and a little bit more every time after that until I thought I couldn't love her more than I did. And when I felt that way, I asked her to marry me ... and she said she would." ~ Jesse Owens

One day, I wish to find a man like in my
books. He has to be just like in one of my books.
And he has to love me, love me more than anything
in the world. Most important of all, he has
to think I'm beautiful."
"Lily, I need to tell you something." Fazire
was going to tell her about Becky's wish and his
mistake and let her look forward to something, let
her look forward to the incomparable beauty she
was going to be.
Most of all, he had to stop her wish now. He
didn't want her wasting it on some fool idea. He
wanted it to be special, perfect, to make her world
better like she had made Becky and Will's and,
indeed, his.
But again she didn't hear him. Her eyes were
bright and they were steady on his.
"He has to be tall, very tall and dark and
broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped."
Fazire stared. He didn't even know what
"narrow-hipped" meant.
"And he has to be handsome, unbelievably
handsome, impossibly handsome with a strong,
square jaw and powerful cheekbones and tanned
skin and beautiful eyes with lush, thick lashes.
He has to be clever and very wealthy but hardworking.
He has to be virile, fierce, ruthless and
rugged."
Now she was getting over his head. He didn't
think there was such a thing as impossibly handsome.
How cheekbones could be powerful,
Fazire didn't know. He was even thinking he
might have to look up "viril ~ Kristen Ashley

Briony's ladies-in-waiting kept their distance, as though their mistress had some illness which might spread - and indeed she did, Briony thought, because unhappiness was ambitious. ~ Tad Williams

With those words, she felt as though Tavish had uncovered some secret part of her - looked into her soul. It was what she felt when she was happy, but she had never thought of herself as a flower but more as a bird to whom the world was giving a chance to stretch out her wings and feel the wind caress her feathers. Then have me. Now. Here. ~ Cristiane Serruya

Rick smiled mischievously and said, "I think I'm going to learn 'Kisses sweeter than wine'. It's a fun one."
Amelia laughed. "What it about?"
"It's about a guy who falls in love with this girl who has kisses sweeter than wine. As you know, folk songs have a story to tell. Well, he asked her to marry him. At first she wouldn't accept his proposal, so he had to beg and plead with her."
"Why didn't she want to marry him?"
"I think she was worried about how it would change her life. She'd been on her own for quite some time and she had to get used to the idea."
Amelia bit her lip and glanced down at her lap. With curiosity, she asked, "Did she finally accept his proposal?"
"Yup. It just took her a while to realize he was the best thing that ever happened to her." Rick grinned. "She sort of reminds me of someone else I know. ~ Linda Weaver Clarke

I've had a lot of sex in my life. I've had mediocre sex with someone I loved. I've had some pretty spectacular sex with people I didn't even know. I like to try new things, I like to push limits and I love to see a woman come undone. But in all my days, I have never had an experience that was so visually perfect. She is just absolute perfection. ~ Kerry Heavens

No sane paleontologist would ever claim that he or she had discovered "The Ancestor." Think about it this way: What is the chance that while walking through any random cemetery on our planet I would discover an actual ancestor of mine? Diminishingly small. What I would discover is that all people buried in these cemeteries
no mater whether that cemetery is in China, Botswana, or Italy
are related to me to different degrees. I can find this out by looking at their DNA with many of the forensic techniques in use in crime labs today. I'd see that some of the denizens of the cemeteries are distantly related to me, others are related more closely. This tree would be a very powerful window into my past and my family history. It would also have a practical application because I could use this tree to understand my predilection to get certain diseases and other facts of my biology. The same is true when we infer relationship among species. ~ Neil Shubin

When Cath's eyes closed, her eyelids stuck. She wanted to open them. She wanted to get a better look at Levi's too-dark eyebrows, she wanted to admire his crazy, vampire hairline
she had a feeling this was never going to happen again and that it might even ruin what was left of her life, so she wanted to open her eyes and bear some witness. ~ Rainbow Rowell

As a volunteer reader to the blind, Babette had some reservations about the old gent's appetite for the unspeakable and seamy, believing that the handicapped were morally bound to higher types of entertainment. If we couldn't look to them for victories of the human spirit, who could we look to? They had an example to set just as she did as a reader and morale-booster. But she was professional in her duty, reading to him with high earnestness, as to a child, about dead men who leave messages on answering machines. ~ Don DeLillo

Sylvia's first impression of Allegra was that no one had ever before had such a beautiful baby.
Jocelyn's first impression of Grigg was that he had nice eyelashes and a funny name, and didn't interest her in the slightest.
Prudie's first impression of Bernadette was that she was startling to look at and dull if you listened, which you hardly ever had to do.
Bernadette's first impression of Prudie was that, in all her long years, she had rarely seen such a frightened young woman.
Grigg's first impression of Jocelyn was that she appeared to think sharing an elevator with him for a few floors was some sort of punishment.
Allegra's first impression of Sylvia was blurred with her first impression of the larger world. For me? she'd asked herself back when she had no words and no way to even know she was asking. And then, when Sylvia, and then, when Daniel had first looked into her eyes - More for me? ~ Karen Joy Fowler

Karen couldn't understand how these encounters had marked him, and she had always believed that a person without trauma was dangerous in some way, untested. Also bizarre: in all of his stories, Dan ended up succeeding. ~ Alexandra Kleeman

Still, I could have been kinder." She frowned, her eyes wandering. "Sibling relationships can be complex. I wonder, sometimes, if my own actions had some bearing upon the paths my brothers chose. Could I have been a better sister to them? Perhaps, as a young ymbryne, I was too focused on myself. ~ Ransom Riggs

I received her sewing kit and pins and brooches; a blank diary purchased especially for me; "Advice to a Young Married Woman", by a minister, which she asked me not to read till I was older----; "Exemplary Letters for Sundry Occasions"; "The Whole Duty of Woman"; and some volumes of Walter Scott's novels, which I might enjoy when my reading had improved. With a glance at Rev. Fowler, whose advice she had sought in this matter, she said that, for a sensible girl such as she knew me to be, novels by respectable authors could provide harmless amusement, but I must remember not to neglect my duties for them, not to demand that my life be a romance, or over strain myself with too much reading. ~ Phillip Margulies

All the same," I said, "when you read the prints in the snow and the evidence of the branches, you did not yet know Brunellus. In a certain sense those prints spoke of all horses, or at least all horses of that breed. Mustn't we say, then, that the book of nature speaks to us only of essences, as many distinguished theologians teach?"
"Not entirely, dear Adso," my master replied. "True, that kind of print expressed to me, if you like, the idea of 'horse,' the verbum mentis, and would have expressed the same to me wherever I might have found it. But the print in that place and at that hour of the day told me that at least one of all possible horses had passed that way. So I found myself halfway between the perception of the concept 'horse' and the knowledge of an individu?al horse. And in any case, what I knew of the universal horse had been given me by those traces, which were singular. I could say I was caught at that moment between the singularity of the traces and my ignorance, which assumed the quite diaphanous form of a univer?sal idea. If you see something from a distance, and you do not understand what it is, you will be content with defining it as a body of some dimension. When you come closer, you will then define it as an animal, even if you do not yet know whether it is a horse or an ass. And finally, when it is still closer, you will be able to say it is a horse even if you do not yet know whether it is Brunellus or Niger. And only when you are at the proper ~ Umberto Eco

Dark had meant Dora, had meant words and events sordid with self. Struggling to the light from Dora's darkness, Caro had acquired conscience and equilibrium like a profound, laborious education. Exercise of principle would always require more from her than from persons nurtured in it, for she had learned it by application of will. Caro would never do the right thing without knowing it, as some could. ~ Shirley Hazzard

West couldn't stop staring at Lady Clare. He had the feeling if he reached out to touch her, he would come away with his fingers scorched. That hair, blazing from beneath a simple gray traveling bonnet... he'd never seen anything like it. Bird-of-paradise red, with glimmers of crimson dancing amid the pinned-up locks. Her skin was flawless ivory except for a tender spray of freckles sprinkled across her nose, like a finishing spice on some luxurious dessert.
She had the look of someone who had been nurtured: educated and well dressed. Someone who had always been lovingly sheltered. But there was a shadow in her gaze... the knowledge that there were some things no human being could be protected from.
God, those eyes... light gray, with striations like the rays of tiny stars. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The maid found a handkerchief of hers, under the bed in which she had died. A ring that had been missing turned up in his own writing desk. A tradesman arrived with fabric she had ordered three weeks ago. Each day, some further evidence of a task half finished, a scheme incomplete. He found a novel, with her place marked.
And this is it. ~ Hilary Mantel

They were still quite near the ship; she saw its green side towering high above them, and people looking at her from the deck. Then, as one might have expected, Eustace clutched at her in a panic and down they both went.
When they came up again she saw a white figure diving off the ship's side. Edmund was close beside her now, treading water, and had caught the arms of the howling Eustace. Then someone else, whose face was vaguely familiar, slipped an arm under her from the other side. There was a lot of shouting going on from the ship, heads crowding together above the bulwarks, ropes being thrown. Edmund and the stranger were fastening ropes round her. After that followed what seemed a very long delay during which her face got blue and her teeth began chattering. In reality the delay was not very long; they were waiting till the moment when she could be got on board the ship without being dashed against its side. Even with all their best endeavors she had a bruised knee when she finally stood, dripping and shivering, on the deck. After her Edmund was heaved up, and then the miserable Eustace. Last of all came the stranger--a golden-headed boy some years older than herself.
"Ca--Ca--Caspian!" gasped Lucy as soon as she had breath enough. For Caspian it was; Caspian, the boy king of Narnia whom they had helped to set on the throne during their last visit. Immediately Edmund recognized him too. All three shook hands and clapped one another on the back with great del ~ C.S. Lewis

For the next eight or ten months, Oliver was the victim of a systematic course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by hand. The hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan was duly reported by the workhouse authorities to the parish authorities. The parish authorities inquired with dignity of the workhouse authorities, whether there was no female then domiciled in 'the house' who was in a situation to impart to Oliver Twist, the consolation and nourishment of which he stood in need. The workhouse authorities replied with humility, that there was not. Upon this, the parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved, that Oliver should be 'farmed,' or, in other words, that he should be dispatched to a branch-workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female, who received the culprits at and for the consideration of sevenpence-halfpenny per small head per week. Sevenpence-halfpenny's worth per week is a good round diet for a child; a great deal may be got for sevenpence-halfpenny, quite enough to overload its stomach, and make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself. So, she appropriated the greater part of the weekl ~ Charles Dickens

Butch hesitated. "Annabeth's okay. You gotta cut her some slack. She had a vision telling her to come here, to find a guy with one shoe. That was supposed to be the answer to her problem."
"What Problem?" Piper asked.
"She's been looking for one of our campers, who's been missing three days," Butch said. "She's going out of her mind with worry. She hoped he'd be here."
"Who?" Jason asked.
"Her boyfriend," Butch said, "A guy named Percy Jackson. ~ Rick Riordan