Home > Author > Lara Prior-Palmer
1 " Every person I meet is lit by my impressions of those I used to know. "
― Lara Prior-Palmer , Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race
2 " It usually seems best to be absent and slightly missed rather than present but distant. "
3 " Glee is my favorite train to catch. It really carries me. "
4 " Perhaps if I had said to myself, at any moment in the race, I am being competitive. I want to win and I care, I might’ve begun to find the whole competition boring. My competitiveness was like a kite I was refusing to pull down from the sky and examine. I think this increased its power over me. I rode with a mysterious compulsion, not knowing where it came from. "
5 " p.46 My tendency for lateness comes from a fear of feeling committed when early...Time is a muscle that seems to randomly flex and relax in a bid to misplace me and many others. I can't rid myself of the sensation that I'm about to fall off the world, as you might fall off the back of a treadmill. "
6 " Why do humans put so much thought into some decisions yet plunge into others like penguins into frozen ocean? I certainly have a fear of falling into the routines of my elders, their eggshell worlds of dangers and do nots. "
7 " Truly I only loved the city for letting me leave. "
8 " Travellers can go out into the world with their devices and prejudices intact to smooth their journeys. Yet, etymologically, a traveller is the one who suffers—or at least, one who works (travail). The traveller forgets she’s going home, and forgets herself, too. "
9 " Lo, I have created the horse, says God in one translation of a Bedouin text. I have molded it from the wind, I have tied good fortune to its mane. It will fly without wings. It will be the noblest of animals. "
― Lara Prior-Palmer
10 " decided if I’m woodland-wild or fireside-tame, and "
11 " Still today I can't help slipping from parties without a word, and often I don't make it to them in the first place. It usually seems best to be absent and slightly missed rather than present but distant "
12 " I suppose we think of pain as associated with an event—an accident, for example. We don’t imagine it going on forever. I found no space for pain and its expression in daily life. "
13 " Words feel like an insult to truth (then again, even on life’s bright days I feel as though I’m throwing meaning into darkness when I speak). "
14 " That sunless morning felt night-like, haunted, sinister. "
15 " You see, Ma, I think I stain the spots I inhabit. When I sit in a corner to write a letter, I can’t sit there again. It feels nice to avoid the memory of me—or maybe I just lust after the new. "
16 " Our human habit is to make endings of things - close them, wrap them up, slap a cap on unruly time - no maybes involved. But what use is a conclusion or an understanding when all I want to do is open up, mess up, unpack, and unreel? "
17 " For the first ten minutes Richard follows us. His head and camera sprout from the sunroof of his car. All day I've felt his photography dissolving me. I don't like performing for a future moment, not when the race is about to end. "
18 " I am racing for the finish and racing for something else, a thing that changes with the wind, a thing I may never know nor think nor really see, only circle around, like a startled horse inspecting a coiled snake. "
19 " What was it about becoming an adult? The color drained from the days and life became a calendar. I floated in a debris of plausible dates and implausible plans. "
20 " Maybe this restlessness is serving to keep some part of me alive. Or maybe I move to avoid making - making words, friends, and love. I do spread my heart thinly as I go. Will I ever accept that the most mythic, meaningful life might lie in the ordinary? The kingdom of details and daily reprises. For now, I’m stunned by all things static. Scared by the idea that a home might exist for me somewhere. "
