When I came home for the summer after my first year of college, I told my mother that my best friend and I were driving to California. She laughed out loud - 2,000 miles in a what? Well, my best friend had an old Chevy. What could go wrong?

it still astounds me, after forty years, that there is no good bread between Chicago and San Francisco.

A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system.

The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer; it's possessed by the reader.

You cannot be an egomaniac on the horse. If you lose your temper and start beating him, either you will destroy him, or he will destroy you. As soon as you start riding horses seriously, you're being disciplined on a daily basis about how ignorant you are and what there is left for you to learn.

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

Ignorance is a self-generating state of mind; one of its characteristics is that it doesn't recognize itself as ignorance.