Fussing over children who cry only encourages them. That's positive reinforcement for negative behavior.

Horses were never wrong. They always did what they did for a reason, and it was up to you to figure it out.

In my opinion, trying to guess what readers want is the wrong approach. You have to tell your story as best you can and as true to yourself as possible. You have to be honest and fair and vulnerable and foolish and brave, and not care what anyone thinks of it.

You're in a horse race but you're thinking like a sheep. Sheep don't win horse races.

One thing about whoring: It put a chicken on the table.

Life there was hard and it made people hard.

Living there [Horse Mesa] was like living in a natural cathedral. Waking up every morning, you walked outside and looked down at the blue lake, then up at the sandstone cliffs--those awe-inspiring layers of red and yellow rock shaped over the millennia, with dozens of black-streaked crevices that temporarily became waterfalls after rainstorms.