English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses

I readily admit it is easy to make of horses what we will. Silent, in some ways reserved, they allow us to train them, and to project our ideas upon them; to ride and drive them, and to make them symbolic, perhaps to a greater degree than any other species.

In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion.

Trollope wrote so many novels and other works that they tend to crowd each other out.

I discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life's mystery and unpredictability, of life's generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.

Like most of the educated, I do harbor a fondness for the sins of my ignorant past.