Dark Horses Quotes & Sayings

Got here half an hour ago and had a look, eyeballin' it," Sawyer said. "It's murder, all right. Tell you something else - the sun went down, and it's as dark as the inside of a horses's ass out here."
"You're sure?"
"Well, I've never actually been inside a horses's ass. — John Sandford

wanted to believe - like a child hearing, in perfect safety, a tale of horror - that the unconscious would be like any other room, once the light was let in. That the dark shapes would resolve only into toy horses and Biedermeyer furniture. That therapy could tame it after all, bring it into society with no fear of its someday reverting. I wanted to believe, despite everything my life had been. — Thomas Pynchon

Horse

What does the horse give you
That I cannot give you?

I watch you when you are alone,
When you ride into the field behind the dairy,
Your hands buried in the mare's
Dark mane.

Then I know what lies behind your silence:
Scorn, hatred of me, of marriage. Still,
You want me to touch you; you cry out
As brides cry, but when I look at you I see
There are no children in your body.
Then what is there?

Nothing, I think. Only haste
To die before I die.

In a dream, I watched you ride the horse
Over the dry fields and then
Dismount: you two walked together;
In the dark, you had no shadows.
But I felt them coming toward me
Since at night they go anywhere,
They are their own masters.

Look at me. You think I don't understand?
What is the animal
If not passage out of this life? — Louise Gluck

It's an Asterion horse, Ansel breathed, her red-brown eyes growing huge.
The horse was black as pitch, with dark eyes that bored into Celaena's own. She'd heard of Asterion horses, of course. The most ancient breed of horse in Erilea. Legend claimed that the Fae had made them from the four winds - spirit from the north, strength from the south, speed from the east, and wisdom from the west, all rolled into the slender-snouted, high-tailed, lovely creature that stood before her. — Sarah J. Maas

Our group pressed west on what was left of Highway 93, toward the pass leading to Las Vegas. Sand covered the road in loose drifts so deep the horses' hooves sank into them. The metal highway signs were bent low by the strong wind, and above us, billboards that once screamed ads for the casinos were now stripped of their promises of penny slots and large jackpots. The raw boards underneath were exposed, like showgirls without their makeup. Some signs had been blown over completely and lay half-buried under mounds of sand, like sleeping animals.
Cars dotted the highway, their paint scoured off and dead tumbleweeds caught underneath them. Their windows were fogged with death, and despite my effort not to look, my eyes were drawn to the blurred images of the still forms inside. I tried to concentrate on the dark road ahead of us instead. — Kirby Howell

A BIRTHDAY
Something continues and I don't know what to call it
though the language is full of suggestions
in the way of language
but they are all anonymous
and it's almost your birthday music next to my bones
these nights we hear the horses running in the rain
it stops and the moon comes out and we are still here
the leaks in the roof go on dripping after the rain has passed
smell of ginger flowers slips through the dark house
down near the sea the slow heart of the beacon flashes
the long way to you is still tied to me but it brought me to you
I keep wanting to give you what is already yours
it is the morning of the mornings together
breath of summer oh my found one
the sleep in the same current and each waking to you
when I open my eyes you are what I wanted to see. — W.S. Merwin

Moonlight does things to a street scene that no other natural or man-made phenomenon can effect. People walk slower, their smiles lingering on contended faces. Horses that usually move along fast enough to stir up the dust off the street plod lazily in the clear, cool night. And in dark corners where people forget to look, the goons come out. — Bailey Bristol

If wishes were horses, even beggars would ride. (Dark-Hunter) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

They were, I doubt not, happy enough in their dark stalls, because they were horses, and had plenty to eat; and I was at times quite happy enough in the dark loft, because I was a man, and could think and imagine. — Hugh Miller

Snow fell. Carolers moved among the mansions of Prairie Avenue, pausing now and then to enter the fine houses for hot mulled cider and cocoa. The air was scented with woodsmoke and roasting duck. In Graceland Cemetery, to the north, young couples raced their sleighs over the snow-heaped undulations, pulling their blankets especially tight as they passed the dark and dour tombs of Chicago's richest and most powerful men, the tombs' bleakness made all the more profound by their juxtaposition against the night-blued snow [ ... ]
Outside the snow muffled the concussion of passing horses. Trains bearing fangs of ice tore through the crossing at Wallace. — Erik Larson

Born for the blue skies,
We'll survive the rain.
Born for the sunrise,
We'll survive the pain. — Switchfoot

The sea had changed. It was dark green now with white-horses, and the rocks shone yellow like phosphorus. Rumbling solemnly the thunder-storm came up from the south. It spread its black sail over the sea; it spread over half the sky and the lightning flashed with an ominous glint.
"It's coming right over the island," thought Snufkin with a thrill of joy and excitement. He imagined he was sailing high up over the clouds, and perhaps shooting out to sea on a hissing flash of lightning. — Tove Jansson

What Machine is it that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling thro' another Day,- another Year,- as thro' an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight ... we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Claret,- we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop ... gather'd dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver ... no Horses, ... only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity ... — Thomas Pynchon

Now the valley cried with anger, "Mount your horses draw your sword." And they killed the mountain people, so they won their just reward. Now they stood beside the treasure, on the mountain dark and red. Turned the stone and looked beneath it. "Peace on earth" was all it said. Go ahead and hate your neighbor,go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of heaven, you can justify it in the end. There won't be any trumpets blowing come the judgment day. On the bloody morning after one tin soldier rides away. — Dennis Lambert

What are your pleasures and pursuits, Lord Moncrieffe?" Miss Eversea asked too brightly, when the silence had gone on for more than was strictly comfortable or polite.
That creaky conversation lubricant. It irritated him again that she was humoring him.
"Well, I'm partial to whores."
Her head whipped toward him like a weather-vane in a hurricane. Her eyes, he noted, were enormous, and such a dark blue they were nearly purple. Her mouth dropped, and the lower lip was quivering with shock or ... or ...
"Whor ... whores ... ?" She choked out the word as if she'd just inhaled it like bad cigar smoke.
He widened his own eyes with alarm, recoiling slightly.
"I ... I beg your pardon - Horses. Honestly, Miss Eversea," he stammered. "I do wonder what you think of me if that's what you heard. — Julie Anne Long

A chasm opened in the earth and out of it coal-black horses sprang, drawing a chariot and driven by one who had a look of dark splendor, majestic and beautiful and terrible. He caught her to him and held her close. The next moment she was being borne away from the radiance of earth in springtime to the world of the dead by the king who rules it. — Edith Hamilton

A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see
that's my idea of happiness. — Henry James

I must purchase this eunuch from You," she said to Ptah-nem-hotep, Who smiled agreeably. "Are they not delightful?" He asked, and looked at the dark bodies of these five slaves with the same love I had seen my great-grandfather give to a team of matched horses or twin bulls, and indeed, since the slave wore nothing, one could see not only their plump and muscular haunches, but the shiny stump where their testicles had been and this gave them a nice resemblance to geldings. — Norman Mailer

The mythic American character is made up of the virtues of fairness, self-reliance, toughness, and honesty. Those virtues are generally stuffed into a six-foot-tall, dark-haired, can-do kind of guy who is at once a family man, attractive to strange women, carefree, stable, realistic, and whimsical. in the lore of America, that man lives on the Great Plains. he's from Texas, Dodge City, Cheyenne, the Dakotas, or somewhere in Montana. In fact, the seedbed of this American character, from the days of de Tocqueville through Andrew Jackson, Wyattt Earp, Pony Express riders, pioneers, and cowboys to modern caricatures played by actors such as Tom Mix, Gary Cooper, and John Wayne has aways been the frontier. It's a place with plenty of room to roam, great sunsets, clear lines between right and wrong, and lots of horses. It's also a place that does not exist and never has. The truth is that there has never been much fairness out here. — Dan O'Brien

I could feel the urgency in the driver's voice as he prodded the horses to greater momentum. The rumble of thunder could be heard rolling through the mountains as foreboding dark clouds rolled overhead obscuring the starry sky. The sun vanished with one last glimmer through the pine trees, then night took possession of the earth. — Rhiannon Frater

Part of me must have really wanted to believe
like a child hearing, in perfect safety, a tale of horror
that the unconscious would be like any other room, once the light was let in. That the dark shapes would resolve only into toy horses and Biedermeyer furniture. That therapy could tame it after all, bring it into society with no fear of its someday reverting. I wanted to believe, despite everything my life had been. Can you imagine? — Thomas Pynchon

They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and- leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing. — Cormac McCarthy

Future generations would be convinced that nothing good could ever have existed in a country that produced such evil. They would think only of these evils. It would be as if these unleashed dark forces had grotesquely marched like devils on dead horses, backward through the gash in the present, and had destroyed the German past too. — Eric Metaxas

And what do the Theban hoplites see in this extended rending of the sky, this white-bright glory of Enlil's lightning? The future, but not theirs: paired cavalry fighters; formed ranks of armored death; grim men on their tall horses with lightning limning weapons tailored to the task; men spoiling for a fight if the gods allowed - the Sacred Band of Stepsons, out from shadows and the dark. — Janet Morris

After the dark starry night came a bright, cheerful morning. The snow melted in the sun, the horses galloped swiftly, and to right and left alike passed new and various forests, fields, villages. — Leo Tolstoy

The storm front towered above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. They slumped bleary-eyed in their saddles and looked at one another. Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place in the iron dark of the world. — Cormac McCarthy

It's alright" said a dreamy voice from beside Harry as Ron vanished into the coach's dark interior. "You're not going mad or anything. I can see them too."
"Can you?" said Harry desperately, turning to Luna. He could see the bat-winged horses reflected in her wide, silvery eyes.
"Oh yes," said Luna, "I've been able to see them since my first year here. They've always pulled the carriages. Don't worry. You're just as sane as I am."
Smiling faintly, she climbed into the musty interior of the carriage after Ron. Not altogether reassured, Harry followed her. — J.K. Rowling

Most / of those he interviewed for the science project had to admit they did not hear the cries of the roses / being burned alive in the noonday sun. Like horses, Geryon would say helpfully, / like horses in war. No, they shook their heads./ Why is grass called blades? he asked them. Isn't it because of the clicking? / They stared at him. You should be / interviewing roses not people, said the science teacher. Geryon liked this idea. / The last page of his project / was a photograph of his mother's rosebush under the kitchen window. / Four od the roses were on fire. / They stood up straight and pure on the stalk, gripping the dark like prophets / and howling colossal intimacies / from the back of their fused throats. — Anne Carson

For a while we talked about things I've forgotten now. Or maybe we were silent for a while, me sitting at the foot of his bed, him stretched out with his book, the two of us sneaking looks at each other, listening to the sound the elevator made, as if we were in a dark room or lost in the country at night, just listening to the sound of horses. — Roberto Bolano

The traffic was heavy, carriages, cabs, wagons, carts of every description passing by, splashing the water out of the gutters, wheels hissing on the wet road, horses dripping, sodden hides dark. Drivers sat hunched with collars up and hats down in a futile attempt to keep the cold rain from running down their necks, hands clenched on the reins. — Anne Perry

That's the cool thing about horses - they don't have prejudice. They don't care if you're tall or thin or if you're dark or if you're light, or if you're rich or you're poor, if you're handsome or not so handsome. — Buck Brannaman

She smiled. Her skin looked whiter than he recalled, and dark spidery veins were beginning to show beneath its surface. Her hair was still the color of spun silver and her eyes were still green as a cat's. She was still beautiful. Looking at her, he was in London again. He saw the gaslight and smelled the smoke and dirt and horses, the metallic tang of fog, the flowers in Kew Gardens. He saw a boy with black hair and blue eyes like Alec's, heard violin music like the sound of silver water. He saw a girl with long brown hair and a serious face. In a world where everything went away from him eventually, she was one of the few remaining constants.
And then there was Camille. — Cassandra Clare