Maggie W

“Just as ballroom dancing and pair skating command partners to work together seamlessly, in the sport of dressage, the rider performers an intricate pas de deux with his partner—a twelve-hundred-pound four-footed beast.”
― Elizabeth Letts, The Perfect Horse: The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

“Great dressage demands more than skill; it engages a rider's inner wisdom and his ability to communicate with a mount in the silent language of horsemanship.”
― Elizabeth Letts, The Perfect Horse: The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

“The stallion’s crest was arched, his nose was perpendicular to the floor, and his hind legs were gathered underneath him, showing off the powerfully developed muscles in his massive hindquarters. His ears cocked back toward his rider—he was concentrating.”
― Elizabeth Letts, The Perfect Horse: The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

“Think about any foreign language you’ve learned (or attempted to). What’s the first thing you learn? Usually how to say “Hello, my name is [Kory]. How are you?” You don’t learn the word for “name,” and the learn the conjugation of “be” (and good thing, too, because it is stubbornly irregular in most languages). You don't learn the interrogative “how” and the various declensions of the second-person pronoun. All that comes later when you have a little something to hand that information on. You learn two complete, if rudimentary, sentences, and that gives you the confidence to keep moving forward—until you reach the subjunctive, anyway.”
― Kory Stamper, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries