The Cat's Table Quotes

“We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“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

“she had a laugh that hinted it had rolled around once or twice in the mud.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“We are expanded by tears, we are told, not reduced by them.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“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

“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

“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

“Sleep is a prison for a boy who has friends to meet.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“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

“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

“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

“But when we are searching for an example of what we no longer have, we see it everywhere.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“I thought I was being loved because I was being altered.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“...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

“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

“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

“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

“We keep wanting to save those who are forlorn in this world. It’s a male habit.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“So what was better for us all? An ignorance, or a cautiousness like his, towards our own hearts.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“Il y a toujours une histoire, une histoire qui attend. Qui existe à peine. À laquelle on ne s'attache que peu à peu et qu'on nourrit. On découvre la carapace qui contiendra notre personnage et le mettra à l'épreuve. On trouve alors le chemin que sera sa vie. (p.179)”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“Miss Lasqueti consumed mostly crime thrillers, which constantly seemed to disappoint her. I suspect that for her the world was more accidental than any book’s plot. Twice I saw her so irritated by a mystery that she half rose from the shadow of her chair and flung the paperback over the railing into the sea.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“He never used words or reason. He just moved dangerously among us.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“He spoke of how viewers of his films should not assume they understood everything about the characters. As members of an audience we should never feel ourselves wiser than they; we do not have more knowledge than the characters have about themselves. We should not feel assured or certain about their motives, or look down on them. I believe this. I recognize this as a first principle of art, although I have the suspicion that many would not.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“Mockery had gone too far during Hearts. There had been an attempt at strangulation and then her ear had been perforated by a fork.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“...record collection, with all those lifetimes and desires rhymed and distilled into two or three minutes of a song.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“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 find in this way the path of your life.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“writer, I cannot remember who, spoke of a person having “a confusing grace.” With an uncertainty alongside her warmth, that is how Emily has always been for me. You trusted her but she didn’t trust herself. She was “good,” but she was not that way in her own eyes. Those qualities still had not balanced out somehow, or agreed with each other. She”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“Our table's status on the Oronsay continued to be minimal, while those at the Captain's Table were constantly toasting 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.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

“Mr. Fonseka would not be a wealthy man. 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