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The Cat's Table QUOTES

The Cat's Table QUOTES

1 " We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

2 " What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

3 " I am someone who has a cold heart. If I am beside a great grief I throw barriers up so the loss cannot go too deep or too far. There is a wall instantly in place, and it will not fall. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

4 " ...how many of us have a moved heart that shies away to a different angle, a millimetre or even less from the place where it first existed, some repositioning unknown to us. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

5 " Ich bin ein Mensch mit kaltem Herzen. Wenn ich mit einem großen Kummer zu tun habe, errichte ich Barrieren, damit das Gefühl des Verlusts nicht zu tief, nicht zu weit eindringen kann. Sofort gibt es eine Mauer, die uneinnehmbar ist. (S. 161) "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

6 " There is a story, always ahead of you. Barely existing. Only gradually do you attach yourself to it and feed it. You discover the carapace that will contain and test your character. You will find in this way the path of your life. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

7 " she had a laugh that hinted it had rolled around once or twice in the mud. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

8 " We are expanded by tears, we are told, not reduced by them. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

9 " What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

10 " Sleep is a prison for a boy who has friends to meet. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

11 " And it would be a spare life he would be certain to lead as a schoolteacher in some urban location. But he had a serenity that came with the choice of the life he wanted to live. And this serenity and certainty I have seen only among those who have the armour of books close by. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

12 " Over the years, confusing fragments, lost corners of stories, have a clearer meaning when seen in a new light, a different place. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

13 " So we came to understand that small and important thing, that our lives could be large with interesting strangers who would pass us without any personal involvement. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

14 " Every immigrant family, it seems, has someone who does not belong in the new country they have come to. It feels like permanent exile to that one brother or wife who cannot stand a silent fate in Boston or London or Melbourne. I’ve met many who remain haunted by the persistent ghost of an earlier place. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

15 " But when we are searching for an example of what we no longer have, we see it everywhere. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

16 " In spite of this, our table's status on the Oronsay continued to be minimal, while those at the Captain's Table were constantly toasting to one another's significance. That was a small lesson I learned on the journey. What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along in the familiar rut they have made for themselves. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

17 " But he had a serenity that came with the choice of the life he wanted to live. And this serenity and certainty I have seen only among those who have the armour of books close by. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

18 " I thought I was being loved because I was being altered. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

19 " So what was better for us all? An ignorance, or a cautiousness like his, towards our own hearts. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table

20 " In a breaker's yard you discover anything can have a new life, be reborn as part of a car or railway carriage, or a shovel blade. You take that older life and you link it to a stranger. "

― Michael Ondaatje , The Cat's Table