"So, she was obviously extremely distressed about it. Whereas Sochigel, the mother of the boy, she may have been distressed, I don’t know, but nothing has shown up in the record. So, he does have this episode of having killed off his brother. But I don’t think it was a deeply meaningful, I think it was important, but I don’t think it was a mostly deeply meaningful for Temüjin. The brother was gone, the problem was solved, mother is extremely ticked off at him but…"

"The Mongol and the horse are inseparable. I wrote one line in the book that the editor removed because that was insulting. I said, the Mongol and the horse, they live together, they know each other with every twitch of the muscle and they smell the same. Well, I was saying it just not to be insulting about anything but they have that deep intimacy and the horses do know their owner from the smell. This is very important. It’s also important for Genghis Khan because they made the flags, what they call [foreign language 01:16:05], out of the horse hair from their own horses. And so, in battle, they used it for a very practical purpose and that is the horses would return to their source because they knew the smell of their flag, it was other members of their own herd."

"But for the Mongolians, it’s a symbolic thing. Because obviously, it’s used for a horse. But for the Mongols, your destiny, yourself is your Khiimori, your wind horse that lives inside of you, your wind horse that guides you and gives you opportunities. But it’s up to you to ride that wind horse. It’s up to you to use the wind horse, not to just go wild with the wind horse. And so, I think it’s at that crucial moment. He’s on his way back home to go with Jamukha and the other soldiers to the market to rescue Börte. And so, symbolically, he found a whip there. But I think it means that he found the way to control his destiny, his fate. It’s very important, very important."