Quotes from The Horse Whisperer

Nicholas Evans ·  451 pages

Rating: (45.1K votes)


“I guess that’s all forever is...Just one long trail of nows. And I guess all you can do is try and live one now at a time without getting too worked up about the last now or the next now.”
― Nicholas Evans, quote from The Horse Whisperer


“She had seemed to need something from him that he hadn’t been able to give...at last he realized that what she had needed from him was need itself. That he should need her as she needed him.”
― Nicholas Evans, quote from The Horse Whisperer


“It was in America that horses first roamed. A million years before the birth of man, they grazed the vast plains of wiry grass and crossed to other continents over bridges of rock soon severed by retreating ice. They first knew man as the hunted knows the hunter, for long before he saw them as a means to killing other beasts, man killed them for their meat.

Paintings on the walls of caves showed how. Lions and bears would turn and fight and that was the moment men speared them. But the horse was a creature of flight not fight and, with a simple deadly logic, the hunter used flight to destroy it. Whole herds were driven hurtling headlong to their deaths from the tops of cliffs. Deposits of their broken bones bore testimony. And though later he came pretending friendship, the alliance with man would ever be but fragile, for the fear he'd struck into their hearts was too deep to be dislodged.

Since that neolithic moment when first a horse was haltered, there were those among men who understood this.

They could see into the creature's soul and soothe the wounds they found there. Often they were seen as witches and perhaps they were. Some wrought their magic with the bleached bones of toads, plucked from moonlit streams. Others, it was said, could with but a glance root the hooves of a working team to the earth they plowed. There were gypsies and showmen, shamans and charlatans. And those who truly had the gift were wont to guard it wisely, for it was said that he who drove the devil out, might also drive him in. The owner of a horse you calmed might shake your hand then dance around the flames while they burned you in the village square.

For secrets uttered softly into pricked and troubles ears, these men were known as Whisperers.”
― Nicholas Evans, quote from The Horse Whisperer


“Knowing is the easy part; saying it out loud is the hard part.”
― Nicholas Evans, quote from The Horse Whisperer


“But you see Annie, where there's pain, there's still feeling and where there's feeling, there's hope.”
― Nicholas Evans, quote from The Horse Whisperer



“Her only shame was that she felt none.”
― Nicholas Evans, quote from The Horse Whisperer


“I guess that's all forever is. Just one big long trail of nows. And I guess all you can do is try and live one now at a time without getting too worked up about the last now or the next now.”
― Nicholas Evans, quote from The Horse Whisperer


“Annie looked into his eyes with their blood-crazed whites and for the first time in her life knew how one might come to believe in the devil.”
― Nicholas Evans, quote from The Horse Whisperer


“They looked at each other and some refraction of the pain in Tom's heart must have shown in his eyes.

Frank said, 'In pretty deep, huh?'

'About as deep as it gets.”
― Nicholas Evans, quote from The Horse Whisperer


“It was, she believed, a simple and unassailable fact of life that if a woman went to epic lengths to throw herself on the mercy of a man, the man would not, could not, refuse.”
― Nicholas Evans, quote from The Horse Whisperer



“I guess that’s all forever is,’ his father replied. ‘Just one long trail of nows. And I guess all you can do is try and live one now at a time without getting too worked up about the last now or the next now.”
― Nicholas Evans, quote from The Horse Whisperer


About the author

Nicholas Evans
Born place: in Worcestershire, The United Kingdom
Born date July 26, 1950
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“<…>Tate fell silent.
Ty didn't.
"Since the day I was released, you knocked yourself out. You had my back, you took care of Lexie when we had our thing then you did what you could to help me sort that. It's important to me that you know I'm grateful. I've been tryin' to figure out how I can show how much but, keep thinkin' on it, nothin' comes to mind and I know why. I get it. You're a man who has everything so there is nothing I can hand you that you want or need. And I get that because I am now that same man. So the only thing I can give you are words and, my guess is, that'll be enough. If it isn't, you name it and it's yours."
"Friends do what I did for friends," Tate returned.
"No they don't, Tate. You did what you did for me because you're you. That's what I'm talkin' about."
Tate ws silent a moment then he said, "Well then, you guessed right. Words are enough."
Ty nodded.
Tate tipped his head to the side and asked jokingly, "We done with the near-midnight in the middle of fuckin' nowhere heart-to-heart?"
Ty didn't feel like joking and answered, "No."
"Then what -?"
"Love you, man," Ty interrupted quietly.
"Learned the hard way not to delay in expressing that sentiment so I'm not gonna delay. You call me brother and I got one who's blood who don't mean shit to me and today, all this shit done, rejoicing and reflecting, it hit me that I got two who aren't blood but who do mean something. And you're one of those two."
"Ty-" Tate murmured.
"I will never forget, until I die, what you did for me and my wife and until that day I will never stop bein' grateful."
"Fuck man," Tate whispered.
"Now, do those words work so you get what you did mean to me?"
Silence then, "Yeah, they work."
"Good, then now we're done with our near-midnight, middle of fuckin' nowhere heart-to-heart," Ty declared, turned, opened the door to the Viper and started folding in.
He stopped with his ass nearly to the seat and looked up over the door when Tate called his name.
"I don't have a blood brother," Tate said. "But you should know there's a reason I call you that."<…>”
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