Laura Hillenbrand · 457 pages
Rating: (122.8K votes)
“His books were the closest thing he had to furniture and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“...maybe it was better to break a man's leg than to break his heart.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“It's easy to talk to a horse if you understand his language. Horses stay the same from the day they are born until the day they die. They are only changed by the way people treat them.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“He had no money and no home; he lived entirely on the road of the racing circuit, sleeping in empty stalls, carrying with him only a saddle, his rosary, and his books....The books were the closest thing he had to furniture, and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“... character reigns preeminent in determining potential.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“In 1938... the year's #1 newsmaker was not FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. Nor was it Lou Gehrig or Clark Gable. The subject of the most newspaper column inches in 1938 wasn't even a person. It was an undersized, crooked-legged racehorse named Seabiscuit.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“He (Thomas Smith) believed with complete conviction that no animal was permanently ruined. Every horse could be improved. He lived by a single maxim: 'Learn your horse. Each one is an individual, and once you penetrate his mind and heart, you can often work wonders with an otherwise intractable beast.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“The racehorse, by virtue of his awesome physical gifts, freed the jockey from himself. When a horse and a jockey flew over the track together, there were moments in which the man's mind wedded itself to the animal's body to form something greater than the sum of both parts.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“We had to rebuild him, both mentally and physically, but you don't have to rebuild the heart when it's already there, big as all outdoors.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“Old Pops and I have got four good legs between us,” he said. “Maybe that’s enough.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“Horses stay the same from the day they are born until the day they die. . . . They are only changed by the way people treat them.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“There's more than one thing I can't do and there are a lot more things than that that you can't do or you wouldn't be in the newspaper business. You'd be a jockey and a scholar and a connoisseur of femininity like I am”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“A Thoroughbred racehorse is one of God's most impressive engines. Tipping the scales at up to 1,450 pounds, he can sustain speeds of forty miles per hour. Equipped with reflexes much faster than those of the most quick-wired man, he swoops over as much as twenty-eight feet of earth in a single stride, and corners on a dime. His body is a paradox of mass and lightness, crafted to slip through air with the ease of an arrow. His mind is impressed with a single command: run. He pursues speed with superlative courage, pushing beyond defeat, beyond exhaustion, sometimes beyond the structural limits of bone and sinew. In flight, he is nature's ultimate wedding of form and purpose.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“Man is preoccupied with freedom yet laden with handicaps. The breadth of his activity and experience is narrowed by the limitations of his relatively weak, sluggish body. The racehorse, by virtue of his awesome physical gifts, freed the jockey from himself.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“We figure he is the people’s horse, and we propose to train him in the open.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“He had a colorless translucence about him that made him seem as if he were in the earliest stages of progressive invisibility.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“Who hit you in the butt with a saddle and told you you could ride?" a starter hissed before a race. "The same S.O.B. that hit you in the butt and told you you could start!" he shot back. Pollard had found the one place on earth that could hold his interest. He was broke, hungry, and, according to his sister Edie, "happy as heck.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“Howard then made Seabiscuit’s entry for the Santa Anita Handicap. He left the jockey space blank.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“The autos alone remained to conquer space.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“So long, Charley.”24 He had coined a phrase that jockeys would use for decades.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“Each of his workouts was attended by ten thousand or more spectators.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
“alive.3 Johnny found myriad avenues of”
― Laura Hillenbrand, quote from Seabiscuit: An American Legend
Laura Hillenbrand
Born place: in Fairfax, Virginia, The United States
Born date May 15, 1967
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“themselves. They work towards unattainable goals and assume too much responsibility. They try to perform several tasks correctly and to the same high standard. When told that their expectations are too high, they reply that they wouldn’t be doing their job properly if they didn’t meet those expectations. And since they’ve convinced themselves that they should be able to meet them, their ears are closed to advice.”
― Yasutaka Tsutsui, quote from Paprika
“And this is what we call life! − If damnation truly is eternal! Isn’t the man who tries to mutilate himselfdamned then? I think I am in hell, therefore I am. It’s the fault of the catechism. I’m a slave to my baptism.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell
“The three-story derelict is home to Smitty, Gale, and Gale's baby - a nuclear family nested on the corner - and Ella is accustomed to seeing them on the front steps, waiting for redemption or a cool breeze from the harbor, neither of which seems particularly likely.”
― David Simon, quote from The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood
“In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting. Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.
In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.
I liked the Irish way better.”
― C.E. Murphy, quote from Urban Shaman
“It’s when we feel the most uncertain,” her mother had told her, “that we must appear at our most confident. To show weakness is to allow others to prey upon it. Now brush your hair, lift your chin, and pretend you are the most powerful person in the room.”
― Morgan Rhodes, quote from Crystal Storm
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