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. (Laura Hillenbrand)
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.
Laura Hillenbrand
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.
Laura Hillenbrand
A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain. Louie thought: Let go.
Laura Hillenbrand
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.
Laura Hillenbrand
I just thought I was empty and now I'm being filled... and I just wanted to keep being filled.
Laura Hillenbrand
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.
Laura Hillenbrand
His books were the closest thing he had to furniture and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.
Laura Hillenbrand
Without dignity, identity is erased.
Laura Hillenbrand
...maybe it was better to break a man's leg than to break his heart.
Laura Hillenbrand
I have vertigo. Vertigo makes it feel like the floor is pitching up and down. Things seem to be spinning. It's like standing on the deck of a ship in really high seas. (Laura Hillenbrand)
I spoke to my agent and learned that a Hollywood scout had seen my proposal in one of the publishing houses, and had faxed it to Hollywood, where it was generating a lot of interest.
Laura Hillenbrand
At that moment, something shifted sweetly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over.
Laura Hillenbrand
... character reigns preeminent in determining potential.
Laura Hillenbrand
People had long conversations with him, only to realize later that he hadn't spoken.
Laura Hillenbrand
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.
Laura Hillenbrand
His conviction that everything happened for a reason, and would come to good, gave him laughing equanimity even in hard times.
Laura Hillenbrand
I think if I had been writing fiction, where the work is entirely dependent on the writer's creativity and the potential directions the narrative might take are infinite, I might have frozen.
Laura Hillenbrand
I have to detach myself completely from aspirations. I hardly ever listen to music anymore because it arouses all of this yearning in me.
Laura Hillenbrand
I'm attracted to subjects who overcome tremendous suffering and learn to cope emotionally with it.
Laura Hillenbrand
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. (Laura Hillenbrand)
In a single, silent moment, his rage, his fear, his humiliation and helplessness, had fallen away. That morning, he believed, he was a new creation. Softly, he wept.
Laura Hillenbrand
Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison.
Laura Hillenbrand
I identified in a very deep way with the individuals I was writing about because the theme that runs through this story is of extraordinary hardship and the will to overcome it.
Laura Hillenbrand
In terms of writing about horses, I fell backwards into that. I was intent on getting a Ph.D., becoming a professor, and writing on history but I got sick 14 years ago when I was 19. Getting sick derailed that plan completely.
Laura Hillenbrand