Maggie W

“It wasn’t story (good or bad) that pulled me in; it was English itself, the way it felt in my braces-caged mouth and rattled around my adolescent head.”
― Kory Stamper, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries

“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

“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

“A horse is wonderfully sensitive for an animal of his size and strength. He is timid by nature and his courage comes only from his confidence in man. His speed, strength, and endurance he will willingly give, and give it to the utmost, if the hand that guides is strong and gentle, and the voice that controls is firm, confident, and friendly. Lack of courage in the master takes from the horse his only chance of being brave; lack of steadiness makes him indirect and futile; lack of kindness frightens him into actions which are the result of terror at first, and which become vices only by mismanagement.”
― John Williams Streeter, The Fat of the Land: The Story of an American Farm