War Horse Quotes

“They’ll look after you—they promised they would. And I need the money, Joey; I need the money bad.”

“Terrified, I knew I could not run, for there was nowhere to go, so I put my back to him, and lashed out behind me. I felt my hooves strike home.”

“Topthorn, I noticed, always shook his head in the water before he started to drink so that alongside him I was showered all over my face and neck with cooling water.”

I knew that once I left [Topthorn] I would be alone in the world again, that I would no longer have his strength and support beside me. So I stayed with him and waited.

“Topthorn and I were hitched up side by side to an old hay cart and [...] driven up through the woods, back toward the thunder of the gunfire and the wounded that awaited us.”

“It was the mud that was killing us one by one—the mud, the lack of shelter, and the lack of food.”

“I stood in a wide corridor of mud, a wasted, shattered landscape, between two vast, unending rolls of barbed wire. [...] This was what the soldiers called “no-man’s-land.”

“When the end of the war did come, it came swiftly. [...] There was little joy, little celebration of victory, only a sense of profound relief.”

“When [Albert’s father] came back into the stable afterward and began to sweet-talk me and held out a bucket of sweet-smelling oats, I was immediately suspicious. But the oats and my own inquisitiveness overcame my better judgment.”

″[Topthorn] lay where he was, breathing heavily, and lifted his head once to look at me. It was an appeal for help—I could see it in his eyes.”

“With Albert riding me, there was no hanging on the reins, no jerking on the bit in my mouth; a gentle squeeze with the knees and a touch with his heels was enough to tell me what he wanted of me. I think he could have ridden even without that, so well did we come to understand each other.”