Elizabeth Letts QUOTES

21 " In truth, though she longed to fit in, she felt more compelled to be true to herself. If she were to have any hope at love, she’d have to find a man who could love her as she was, even though there seemed little likelihood that such a man existed. "

― Elizabeth Letts , Finding Dorothy

22 " And that is the magic of Oz - the magic is that it isn't magic at all "

― Elizabeth Letts , Finding Dorothy

23 " Presence of mind, and courage in distress, / Are more than armies to procure success.” Trained "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

24 " But one thing Annie had figured out in her almost sixty-three years of life was that although you could dip your toe in a pond on a summer day and guess how cold it was going to be, you never really knew for sure until you plugged your nose and closed your eyes and jumped all the way in. The unexpected could always be a shock, but sometimes it was the expected, the predictable, the resigned acceptance of whatever bad thing was coming your way that could end up dragging you down. "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America

25 " For all of their size and strength, horses are surprisingly fragile creatures. Bearing tremendous weight on their slender legs, they are subject to all manner of lameness—bone spavins, pricked feet, broken knees, corns. Some have faults of conformation that put unnecessary strain on their legs. Some have been ill used—jumped too much or ridden too hard. "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation

26 " Everything that mattered in Hank Reed’s life, outside of his family, revolved around horses. Starting with his days as a cadet, he had lived in a world that could measure everything—honor, kindliness, discipline, sporting spirit, diligence, and, most of all, courage—in equestrian terms. His brain was crammed with the nomenclature of horses: cantle, withers, curb chain, bran mash, fetlock, stock tie, near side, picket line. He knew the aids for a flying lead change, the correct attire for a foxhunt, the thunder of charging by platoon, and the serenity of riding alone on a quiet path, with only his mount’s breaths and cadenced footsteps for company. The rhythm of a horse’s strides was like music to him—the walk a ballad in four/four time, the trot a rousing two-beat march, the canter a smooth three-beat waltz. Reed knew the scent of fresh straw in the stable, the tickle of a horse’s whiskers as it nuzzled up a carrot. He knew that endless moment when a fall was inevitable and then the sudden breathless smack of landing hard on packed dirt. He knew what the end of a day on horseback felt like, salty with sweat, dirt under his fingernails, and a mind whitewashed from all worry. More than anything, Hank Reed understood what was unspoken among all of these horse soldiers. Sunburned, brusque, tough, accustomed to giving and taking orders, they knew that if you live, eat, sleep, and breathe horses for long enough, they become part of you, and your soul is forever altered. "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

27 " Among the twentieth-century descendants of the Spanish horse, the Lipizzaner was the most rarefied. Each had its royal pedigree tattooed upon it: the birthplace on the right shoulder; the dam, or mother, on the left flank and the sire on the right flank; and the letter L, marking it as a purebred Lipizzaner, on the cheek. Each was descended from one of six original sires, all born between 1765 and 1810. These "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

28 " In truth, Belmont’s Jockey Club, the organization that controlled Thoroughbred racing in America, was founded by a mix of people. Some were blue-blooded Americans who traced their ancestry to Mayflower voyagers and Puritan founding fathers, and others were nouveau riche industrialists who wished to ally themselves—through marriages to aristocrats, membership in the Episcopal Church, and associations with the elite sport of horse racing—to the American upper crust. At "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

29 " The Thoroughbred was originally an English breed, and to this day, all so-named horses trace their lineage back to three stallions imported into England from the Middle East in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

30 " Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, first coined the term “eugenics” in his 1883 book Human Faculty and Its Development. "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

31 " She smiled, tapped on her book, and said, “I’m just going to read for a few more minutes.” Frank, however, seemed to have been storing up speeches all day, and, undeterred, he prattled nonstop as he took off his hat and scarf. "

― Elizabeth Letts , Finding Dorothy

32 " if you wanted something, you needed to ask for it—or demand it, if necessary. "

― Elizabeth Letts , Finding Dorothy

33 " Among the numerous heartbreaks of this terrible war, the innocent horses shot, abused, and killed would not rank among the worst atrocities—but somehow, the killing of innocent beasts, domesticated animals who existed only for man's beauty and pleasure, seemed to highlight the barbaric and depraved depths to which man had allowed himself to sink. "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

34 " She who hesitates is lost. "

― Elizabeth Letts , Finding Dorothy

35 " LIST OF CHARACTERS THE EUROPEANS Andrzej Kristalovich (Andrzej Krzysztalowicz): /Ahn-jay Kshee-stal-o-veech/ Director of Poland’s national stud farm. Rudolf Lessing: German army veterinarian stationed at the Hostau stud farm in Czechoslovakia. Alois Podhajsky: /Ah-loys Pod-hey-skee/ Austrian director of the Spanish Riding School of Vienna. Gustav Rau: German horse expert. Chief equerry in charge of all horse breeding in the Third Reich. Hubert Rudofsky: Czech-born ethnic German. Director of the stud farm in Hostau, Czechoslovakia. Jan Ziniewicz: "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

36 " Seventy-seven years old and Maud sometimes still felt as if her mother were perched just behind the wings, whispering stage instructions. "

― Elizabeth Letts , Finding Dorothy

37 " Bolshevik marauders in 1917 raided most of the large Polish stud farms and slaughtered the horses, which they viewed as playthings of princes. Horses hung from the barn rafters, their throats slit. Stable courtyards turned into lakes of blood. Of the five hundred registered purebred Arabians in Poland prior to 1917, only fifty survived the raids. "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

38 " THE HORSES Lotnik: Gray Arabian stallion foaled in Poland. Neapolitano Africa: Austrian Lipizzaner performing stallion, one of Alois Podhajsky’s personal mounts. Pluto Theodorosta: Austrian Lipizzaner performing stallion, one of Alois Podhajsky’s personal mounts. Witez: /Vee-tezh/ Bay Arabian stallion foaled in Poland in 1938. His official registered name was Witez "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

39 " The dam, a gray mare, had a rare marking called “the bloody shoulder.” According to Arabian lore, a mare with this distinctive patch of reddish hair would give birth to horses that would win glory in battle. At "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis

40 " you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. —African proverb "

― Elizabeth Letts , The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America