Quotes from Paula McLain

The post had a fresh coat of white paint with two jaunty black stripes, making it look like a buoy fixed and still in a bright emerald sea. Though

Races weren't supposed to be pageants or cocktail parties. They were tests. Hundreds of hours of training came down to a few breathless moments—and only then would anyone know if the animals were ready, which would rise and which would stumble, how the work and the talent would match up to carry this horse through, while that one would be left wearing dust, the jockey ashamed or surprised or full of excuses. There

I did finally make it to Paris, in June of 2010. And though most tourists go straight to the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, or to Notre-Dame Cathedral, I headed for the chipped blue door of 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, Hadley and Ernest's first apartment in the Latin Quarter. The

But he'd "got a leg," as they say in horse speak. Before he'd come to Soysambu, he'd been overtrained, and his tendons had become sensitive, with a tendency to swell.

People belong to each other only as long as they both believe. He's stopped believing.

There was plenty of room for magic in any race, too, for chance and for grit, for tragedy, if an animal went down, for unexpected reversals at the tape. I had always loved all of it—even what couldn't be controlled or predicted.

Wanda and I lock eyes, laughing. "What's so funny?" Will wants to know. "Your face," Wanda says with a wink, and just like that I love her. The world needs an army of Wandas—strong, sarcastic, unafraid women who say what they think and act straightforwardly, without apology or permission. Women who roar instead of flinch. "Hilarious," Will says flatly. "Just bring me a drink, will you?

I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her." What

It was Lavender who drove us to the Norfolk Hotel in Jock's yellow Bugatti. He sped through the streets of Nairobi, throwing me across the leather backseat towards Jock, so that I nearly bruised myself against his clenched thighs.

few hours later, when Dynasty danced onto the track, I felt my pulse jump. Her coat gleamed. Her steps were high and springing and confident. She didn't look like the six-year-old mare D had turned over to me months before, but like a queen.

Dynasty glided right through the chaos as though none of it involved her. The

Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind—as Nora Bayes insisted—a country you could sculpt out of air and then dance into.

because you can't chart a course around anything you're afraid of. You can't run from any part of yourself, and it's better that you can't. Sometimes I've thought it's only our challenges that sharpen us, and change us, too—a

D had formed the committee a few months before, part of a new effort to combat the old problem of just who had a right to Kenya, and why. White settlers had always been keen on self-rule, which amounted to something more like total domination of the territory.

Each object was the same as it had been—but the air all around felt different. I was different.

I wasn't sure how I could say no." "No is the easiest word there is. Children learn to talk by saying no.

We slept as much as we wanted, made love twice a day, read and wrote letters and played cards.

The animals were like a storm moving whole, and then breaking,

Twende tu," she called out in Swahili as she buckled her helmet. I am going.

The way I see it, how can you really say you'll love a person longer than love lasts?

Under buttery gravy, there was the ubiquitous tommie steak with buttons of potatoes and pearled onions. My father was paying through the nose for the champagne, so I drank as much as I could, every time it came round.

The animals were like a storm moving whole, and then breaking, every strategy falling away, all caution gone. In the last few furlongs, nothing mattered but legs and length. Dynasty sailed through the final contenders and gained on the favourite, who seemed to stand still for her alone. She ran as if she were flying. As if she were dreaming the win, or winning in someone else's dream. Then her nose was at the tape. The crowd exploded. She'd done it. I

In the wee hours, Lavender chauffeured us again, this time to the Muthaiga Country Club, to a square room lit with a single crystal lamp. A broad bed swam with chenille. Jock

If you're going to be mad at someone, be mad at your mom. She left you alone. That wasn't right.