The Horse Whisperer

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.

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.

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.

Knowing is the easy part; saying it out loud is the hard part.

But you see Annie, where there's pain, there's still feeling and where there's feeling, there's hope.

Her only shame was that she felt none.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.