Rough Magic Quotes

“Perhaps if I had said to myself, at any moment in the race, I am being competitive. I want to win and I care, I might’ve begun to find the whole competition boring. My competitiveness was like a kite I was refusing to pull down from the sky and examine. I think this increased its power over me. I rode with a mysterious compulsion, not knowing where it came from.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Perhaps if I had said to myself, at any moment in the race, I am being competitive. I want to win and I care, I might’ve begun to find the whole competition boring. My competitiveness was like a kite I was refusing to pull down from the sky and examine. I think this increased its power over me. I rode with a mysterious compulsion, not knowing where it came from.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“It usually seems best to be absent and slightly missed rather than present but distant.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Glee is my favorite train to catch. It really carries me.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“You see, Ma, I think I stain the spots I inhabit. When I sit in a corner to write a letter, I can’t sit there again. It feels nice to avoid the memory of me—or maybe I just lust after the new.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“I suppose we can all be prone at times to trapping certain countries in their distance, exotic pasts, ignoring their presents.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Why do humans put so much thought into some decisions yet plunge into others like penguins into frozen ocean? I certainly have a fear of falling into the routines of my elders, their eggshell worlds of dangers and do nots.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“For the first ten minutes Richard follows us. His head and camera sprout from the sunroof of his car. All day I've felt his photography dissolving me. I don't like performing for a future moment, not when the race is about to end.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“p.46 My tendency for lateness comes from a fear of feeling committed when early...Time is a muscle that seems to randomly flex and relax in a bid to misplace me and many others. I can't rid myself of the sensation that I'm about to fall off the world, as you might fall off the back of a treadmill.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Horse lovers have excessive feeling.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Maybe home is just all that we leave behind.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Every person I meet is lit by my impressions of those I used to know.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Our human habit is to make endings of things - close them, wrap them up, slap a cap on unruly time - no maybes involved. But what use is a conclusion or an understanding when all I want to do is open up, mess up, unpack, and unreel?”
― lara prior-palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Around the world your horse is often seen as a reflection of your character.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Sport is war in disguise.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Truly I only loved the city for letting me leave.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“What had we all missed not growing up in Texas?”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Horse smell is the same the world over”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“decided if I’m woodland-wild or fireside-tame, and”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“We humans speak ten thousand languages - a little eye contact must ripple through them all”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“The right to buck off a human being is one of the universal rights of horses”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Isn’t it disappointing that my resistance has always revolved around really futile matters? Teachers, etiquette, Mongol Darby positioning. Why can’t I get angry about the sad news in the papers? It seems I have to see it and touch it and then I can’t resist resisting it.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Maybe this restlessness is serving to keep some part of me alive. Or maybe I move to avoid making - making words, friends, and love. I do spread my heart thinly as I go. Will I ever accept that the most mythic, meaningful life might lie in the ordinary? The kingdom of details and daily reprises. For now, I’m stunned by all things static. Scared by the idea that a home might exist for me somewhere.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“I am racing for the finish and racing for something else, a thing that changes with the wind, a thing I may never know nor think nor really see, only circle around, like a startled horse inspecting a coiled snake.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“What was it about becoming an adult? The color drained from the days and life became a calendar. I floated in a debris of plausible dates and implausible plans.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“That sunless morning felt night-like, haunted, sinister.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Words feel like an insult to truth (then again, even on life’s bright days I feel as though I’m throwing meaning into darkness when I speak).”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“I suppose we think of pain as associated with an event—an accident, for example. We don’t imagine it going on forever. I found no space for pain and its expression in daily life.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Still today I can't help slipping from parties without a word, and often I don't make it to them in the first place. It usually seems best to be absent and slightly missed rather than present but distant”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race