All the Pretty Horses is a novel set in 1949. John Grady Cole, a sixteen-year-old Texan, loses the ranch he loves and rides into Mexico with a friend, hoping to live as a cowboy. They find work on a large ranch, and John Grady is drawn into a dangerous love affair with the owner's daughter. The book is the first of the Border Trilogy. It blends adventure, romance and a coming of age story, with vivid landscapes and a sober view of honor, loss and the harshness of the world.
Quotes
....A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman, he said. They’re always more trouble than what they’re worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done.
You think about all that stuff that can happen to you, he said. There aint no end to it.
He said we were full of shit. But in a nice way.
When they went down to the bunkhouse for dinner the vaqueros seemed to treat them with a certain deference but whether it was the deference accorded the accomplished or that accorded to mental defectives they were unsure.