Laura Hillenbrand Quotes

It's easy to talk to a horse if you understand his language. Horses stay the same from the day they are born until the day they die. They are only changed by the way people treat them.

Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.

The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.

... character reigns preeminent in determining potential.

This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind.

I just thought I was empty and now I'm being filled...and I just wanted to keep being filled.

Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.

His books were the closest thing he had to furniture and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.

His conviction that everything happened for a reason, and would come to good, gave him laughing equanimity even in hard times.

When he thought of his history, what resonated with him now was not all that he had suffered but the divine love that he believed had intervened to save him.

Without dignity, identity is erased.

I am in an altogether new world now. I can think of nothing more wonderful. It is a real touch of all that heaven means.

In 1938... the year's #1 newsmaker was not FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. Nor was it Lou Gehrig or Clark Gable. The subject of the most newspaper column inches in 1938 wasn't even a person. It was an undersized, crooked-legged racehorse named Seabiscuit.

Though all three men faced the same hardship, their differing perceptions of it appeared to be shaping their fates. Louie and Phil's hope displaced their fear and inspired them to work toward their survival, and each success renewed their physical and emotional vigor. Mac's resignation seemed to paralyze him and the less he participated in their efforts to survive, the more he slipped. Though he did the least, as the days passed, it was he who faded the most. Louie and Phil's optimism, and Mac's hopelessness, were becoming self-fulfilling.

I'm attracted to subjects who overcome tremendous suffering and learn to cope emotionally with it

Fatigue is what we experience, but it is what a match is to an atomic bomb.

...maybe it was better to break a man's leg than to break his heart.

What God asks of men, said [Billy] Graham, is faith. His invisibility is the truest test of that faith. To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen.

But with nonfiction, the task is very straightforward: Do the research, tell the story

Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen.

Every day after lunch when I was writing my first book, I'd nibble a square of fine chocolate and meditate on all that had gone into its creation: the sun and rain that spilled on the cocoa plant, the soil that nourished it, the hands that picked the beans, and so on. My taste of chocolate became a lesson on the interconnectedness of things, and the infinite blessings for which I am grateful.

I am actually in poor health due to chronic fatigue and immune dysfunction syndrome, and my ability to work is greatly diminished right now, so I have to get better before I can start another big project

My illness is excruciating and difficult to cope with. It takes over your entire life and causes more suffering than I can describe.

I've used a cellphone exactly twice. Things move on. The world changes. And I don't know it

He had no money and no home; he lived entirely on the road of the racing circuit, sleeping in empty stalls, carrying with him only a saddle, his rosary, and his books...The books were the closest thing he had to furniture, and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.