Quotes

Now don't get the wrong impression. I'm not a recluse or anything. All those parties in Hollywood, I liked them well enough, I just had enough of that. Besides, it's just that I don't care if I'm seen. I'm not really impressed by anything. I mean that. Nothing impresses me. I guess I'm an iconoclast. I guess I'm the biggest iconoclast I know.

What the hell do I have to do? Eighteen percent I'm winning. Eighteen percent, and I don't have one ride. Ah, I should just forget about it and go shopping or something. There's jockeys who just love it when they can get a day off. But I don't have any ambition to do anything else. It's my whole life. I never knew it would be so satisfying to win. I love horses and speed, and I've always liked competition, but I never knew it would be so satisfying to win. Nothing makes me happier. I mean, some man could buy me something, anything, and it wouldn't mean as much to me as winning a race. I just love to win. It satisfies me mentally. If I don't win, I get very depressed.

[on starting out as an exercise girl] The horses weren't so scared, but boy, I was. Invariably, they'd run away with me, but it was dark in the morning that time of the year and [trainer Bruce] Headley couldn't see. One day, when it got lighter in the morning, he said, 'Gee, you don't gallop real good, do you?'

I'm going to be highly successful, so there'll be a much more interesting life for them to write about 10 years from now. But the main thing is I just don't want to do it, so I'm not going to. I just want to ride.

All my life people have said I'm not very friendly. But listen, I'm friendly with some people. I have real friends. I'm moody, but if I'm bitchy, I get it right out of my system.

I make my own conflicts.

I'm thin, but I'm strong. I always had good muscles. I'm a rare physical individual-and I'm not trying to be narcissistic about it. It's just that I'm very unusual in that way.

The men jockeys have treated me terrific, but then, all my friends have always been men. I resented being called a tomboy, though, because I wouldn't want to be a man. I like them too much. I just get along with them, period. Women resent this for some reason. My mother used to resent this. Like when she and my father would have people over, I'd hang around with the men.

I never think of myself as making progress on behalf of anybody but myself. I have no interest whatever in the women's movement except in the sense that I believe everybody should have the right to do what they want to do. I don't want to invade a man's world. I just want to ride horses. I'm not out to prove anything.