The Language of Hoofbeats Quotes

“My daughter was mentally ill,” I said. “So I know. It’s an illness, just like it says in the phrase. It’s not a moral failing. It’s funny how people have empathy for a physical illness. They see it as bad luck, and they never question whether you can help it.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“But I bet more than half the people in the world right now are worrying about something that really is going to be okay.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“There are some things it doesn’t feel good to do, but there shouldn’t be things you can’t do. It gives the world too much power over you.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“Why be given hours and days if all you want to do is make them go away again?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“watching TV and playing solitaire is not a proper life. It’s not living. It’s killing time, and that’s hardly the same. You start asking yourself too many questions when your day is reduced to these rote activities that accomplish nothing. You start to wonder”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“I wondered if my life would have turned out all differently if my hair had been blonde and baby-fine. If I’d been naturally pretty and tall like the ladies across the road.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“I realized I’d been on pins and needles waiting to see how he’d react to being penned up again. I’ll never understand that. How can I be on pins and needles and not even know it? It sounds like a thing that shouldn’t exist in the world at all, but there it is. It’s discouraging to be in the middle of a life that’s impossible to explain.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“Not everybody who marries in the church and has a family the old-fashioned way is unhappy.” “No, but some are. And even if it’s just hit-and-miss . . . even if anybody can fall through the cracks, it’s still not what I thought I was buying into at all. It still all feels like it makes no sense.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“It’s a choice between getting the crap beaten out of you for being exactly what you are, or avoiding the beating by selling out and pretending you’re not, which is like pretending there’s something wrong with what you are. I’m not sure which is worse.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“Of course it landed in my gut to a total panic response, because I wasn’t expecting anyone, and didn’t seem able to anticipate anything but more trouble. I try not to think that way, but it’s more a feeling than a thought, and besides, it’s an involuntary response.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“My brain was not right. I told it to perform, and it wouldn’t listen. Then, suddenly, just as I gave up on remembering, it was there. Fully formed in my brain.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“And you never have to change the water, because the horse does it for you, by drinking it down and triggering the valve to refill. So there’s always fresh oxygen for the fish. And you never have to feed the fish, because they eat the algae. And so long as no hawks or eagles come by to go fishing, you’re golden.” “And they don’t scare the horse?” “Never met a horse who cared.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“if you meet someone you don’t like, or who doesn’t treat you right, try to reserve judgment, because you don’t know what that person’s going through,”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“you meet someone you don’t like, or who doesn’t treat you right, try to reserve judgment, because you don’t know what that person’s going through, and it’s probably not so much about you at all.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“And that, I realized, is the worst price we pay for living in a dearth of true communication. We go through our whole lives thinking it’s only us.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“It made me feel unsalvageable, as though I had been born unlikable and had no hope for being any other way now.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“There was something familiar in her energy. And yet I didn’t want to use that word, because it sounded too flaky and new-agey, and I didn’t even know if I believed that people had an energy. But there’s something in a person you can feel, so that you know a little bit about him before he even opens his mouth. I just wasn’t sure what to call it.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“if you meet someone you don’t like, or who doesn’t treat you right, try to reserve judgment, because you don’t know what that person’s going through, and it’s probably not so much about you at all.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“I figured I must be more present now, in this perfectly excruciating moment when my fondest wish was to be absent.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“Where isn’t really the problem. The where isn’t to blame for the what.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“I’m trying to learn to be a nicer person.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“I think people are slow to believe in any kind of change.” “That’s ’cause nobody ever changes,” she said. “Do you really believe that? Not ever?” “Well. Hardly ever. I guess you could be the exception to the rule.” She still sounded as though she planned to wait and see, but it was marvelous progress all the same. It made my whole day.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“Star had Comet haltered and out of his corral, his lead rope tied to the top rail of the fence, and she was raking out the manure and small stones with amazing care, so that no square inch of dirt was left ungroomed. She had just led him out and tied him to the rail. She made it look so easy. Was it really so easy? Every time she had been here working, I’d stayed close and watched”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“curiosity has its glue-like qualities.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“He’s not like the other cops. What does it mean, that I thought that? That I hated him so much?” “That you’re human?” “Isn’t that really bad, though? I mean, what does that say about me?” I sighed. “Considering you just saw yourself doing it . . . made that observation all on your own, at age thirteen . . . I’d say that puts you quite a bit ahead of most of the adults I know.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“the divisions of time had gone on vacation, leaving just a crush of constant moments.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“Hurt and relieved, all at the same time. It always made my chest ache to feel two things at once, each so strongly.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“I was a mean old woman. I’d never meant to be, but it was unquestionable that I was. Up until that moment, I’d half known, but I hadn’t cared what other people thought of me. I guess I cared what Vern thought, but somehow I’d considered him grandfathered in. I guess I’d thought he had to put up with me regardless. I cared what Denny and Bobby thought of me,”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“does it seem to you like she’s right around here somewhere?” I watched his forehead furrow. I think he knew what I was asking. That I was talking about some kind of sixth sense knowing. Which made my question nearly impossible to answer.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats

“I’m certainly glad to be getting him back.” Which was true, but it didn’t feel anything like being happy. In fact, the more I thought about it—well, I didn’t think about it, I felt it. You can think about happiness all you want, but it won’t get you far. It’s not a thinking sort of proposition.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Language of Hoofbeats