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

Charles Dickens was an avid seeker of names - he read directories and looked for odd names on gravestones.

When people leave, they always seem to scoop themselves out of you.

I had spent years thinking about one thing while I was doing another. I had, in fact, prided myself on being able to do two things at once.

Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family

A reader's tastes are peculiar. Choosing books to read is like making your way down a remote and winding path. Your stops on that path are always idiosyncratic. One book leads to another and another the way one thought leads to another and another. My type of reader is the sort who burrows through the stacks in the bookstore or the library (or the Web site — stacks are stacks), yielding to impulse and instinct.

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.