Popular quotes about Cats! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 26
Evidence indicates that cats were first tamed in Egypt. The Egyptians stored grain, which attracted rodents, which attracted cats. (No evidence that such a thing happened with the Mayans, though a number of wild cats are native to the area.) I don't think this is accurate. It is certainly not the whole story. Cats didn't start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function.
William S. BurroughsAnd then there were cats, thought Dog. He'd surprised the huge ginger cat from next door and had attempted to reduce it to cowering jelly by means of the usual glowing stare and deep-throated growl, which had always worked on the damned in the past. This time they had earned him a whack on the nose that had made his eyes water. Cats, Dog considered, were clearly a lot tougher than lost souls. He was looking forward to a further cat experiment, which he planned would consist of jumping around and yapping excitedly at it. It was a long shot, but it just might work.
Terry PratchettWalter had never liked cats. They'd seemed to him the sociopaths of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary for the control of rodents and subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries, saluting the uniforms of killers as cat owners stroke their animals' lovely fur and forgive their claws and fangs. He'd never seen anything in a cat's face but simpering incuriosity and self-interest; you only had to tease one with a mouse-toy to see where it's true heart lay...cats were all about using people
Jonathan FranzenI mean, if your about to tell me something like I'm dead, that i need to start acquiring a taste for blood, and I can't even eat sushi, I wont be able to handle it. Or if you're going to tell me that I'm going to start howling at the moon, eating peoples cats, and will spend the rest of my life having to get waxed if I want to wear a bathing suit, then I don't think I can handle it, either. I like cats and I tried waxing once, and that hurt like a son of a gun." -Kylie
C.C. HunterCats didn't start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function.
William S. BurroughsI'm not a star. I'll never be a Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley or a Ray Charles. I'm just an imitator, man. I'm doing a very bad imitation on the bass of Jerry Jemmott, Bernard Odum, Jimmy Fielder, Jimmy Blanton, Igor Stravinsky, Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, James Brown, Charlie Parker... the cats, man. I'm just backing up the cats.
Jaco PastoriusOur father was a great warrior. Our mother is proud and strong. They shared only one flaw: that their only loyalty was to themselves above all other cats. We're not like that. We understand what it means to be loyal to our Clan. We have the courage to live by the warrior code. And because of that we'll be the most powerful cats in RiverClan one day, and our Clanmates will have to respect us then.
Erin HunterI would say old school cats like Redman and Wu-tang. My style is my style, those are just cats that I liked.
Obie TriceWe must begin to understand the nature of intertextuality . . . the manner by which texts poems and novels respond to other texts. After all, all cats may be black at night, but not to other cats.
Henry Louis GatesCats too, with what silent stealthiness, with what light steps do they creep up to a bird!
Pliny the ElderDogs believe every stranger is a friend they haven't met yet. Cats wait for a proper invitation.
Vicki BrownI'm a cat person. I have two giant cats [Harry and Arturo] that I call the small panthers. They're like 17 pounds each-they're big boys! Every photo on my phone is of them doing something funny.
Dave FrancoRaynor slapped her so hard her teeth rattled and eyes stung, but she refused to react except to say saucily, "You must have heard how I like foreplay." "I hope you like it a lot, because with your mouth, you'll be getting it nonstop." "Goody," she said dryly. "Because I so love a man who needs to prove his masculinity by beating on women. Do you hit children and kick cats, too?
Larissa IoneLetting cats and dogs have litters is tantamount to shooting shelter animals in the head since it kills their chances of adoption. Please do the right thing and spay or neuter your animals.
Steven MorrisseyCats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience.
Pam BrownI was taught that candles are like house cats - domesticated versions of something wild and dangerous. There's no way to know how much of that killer instinct lurks in the darkness. I used to think the house-burning paranoia was the result of some upper-middle-class fear regarding the potential destruction of a half-million-dollar Westchester house the size of a matchbox. But then I realized the fear stemmed from something far less complex: we're not used to fire. Candles are a staple of the Judaic existence and, like many suburban residents before us, we're pretty bad Jews.
Sloane CrosleyI always tell people that I was fortunate I was able to come in with a group of men. We didn't come into the game with a group of boys. We were young then. So your cats keep you in check.
Chuck DNathanial can show me how to better control the change, but even so, you never have to worry about me turning into a cat again. Didn't you know, I'm allergic to cats.
Jeaniene Frost"I was just like a pathological liar when I was a kid. I think I just wanted to one-up somebody. Somebody would be like, 'Oh, God, my legs hurt.' I'd be like, 'Your legs hurt? I'm getting mine amputated next week.' And that's actually how my mother found out. She came to school and somebody was like, 'God, that's such a shame about Jennifer's legs.' She made me purge. I had to spill out all of my lies. I was like, 'I said that Dad drove a barge, and we were millionaires, and you were pregnant, I had to get my legs amputated, and I spayed cats and dogs on the weekends.' Now I can't lie.
Jennifer LawrenceKing old ladies assure us that cats are often the best judges of character. A cat will always to to a good man, they say.
Virginia WoolfI mean, I have done scenes with animals, with owls, with bats, with cats, with special effects, with thespians, in the freezing cold, in the pouring rain, boiling hot; I've done press with every syndication, every country; I've done interviews with people dressed up as cows - there's honestly nothing that's gonna intimidate me!
Emily WatsonCats sleep Anywhere, Any table, Any chair, Top of piano, Window-ledge, In the middle, On the edge.
Eleanor FarjeonWe have relationships with many different things, creatures and beings. We have relationships with cats, with dogs, with horses, and we know that there are certain things they can't do. So we'll add robots to that list, and we'll learn what they can and cannot do. No harm, no foul.
Sherry TurkleCats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their ''evil'' look at such times is no human projection: the cat may be the only animal who savors the perverse or reflects upon it
Camille PagliaTheir [cats] effortless passing between the wild and domestic worlds suggests the kind of grace we need as a species to move between nature and culture.
Richard MabeyBase stealing for me is another sport all by itself. It's a game within a game. I'm the mouse and the cats are trying to trap me.
Maury WillsWords should wander and meander. They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing.
David AlmondConfidence; as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I love cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.
Haruki MurakamiI view cats as more like wild animals. We feed it, but a lot of times it's not eating the food because it's murdering other animals outside and eating their meat.
Jake M. JohnsonIt may be that the strongest instinct of the human race, stronger than sex or hunger, is curiosity: the absolute need to know. It can and often does motivate a lifetime, it kills more than cats, and the prospect of satisfying it can be the most exciting of emotions.
Jack FinneyCat talk is a complicated, self-centered language. If you speak to your cat first, it probably won't speak back. Cats initiate conversations.
Jean Craighead GeorgeI love them, they are so nice and selfish. Dogs are TOO good and unselfish. They make me feel uncomfortable. But cats are gloriously human.
Lucy Maud MontgomeryI like the type of culture that the Internet allows to happen. And, of course, for some bizarre reason, that is cats!
Cory ArcangelHowever inadequate our ideas of causal efficacy may be, we are less wide of the mark when we say that our ideas and feelings have it, than the Automatists are when they say they haven't it. As in the night all cats are gray, so in the darkness of metaphysical criticism all causes are obscure. But one has no right to pull the pall over the psychic half of the subject only . . . whilst in the same breath one dogmatizes about material causation as if Hume, Kant, and Lotze had never been born.
William JamesWhen I visit a new bookstore, I demand cleanliness, computer monitors, and rigorous alphabetization. When I visit a secondhand bookstore, I prefer indifferent housekeeping, sleeping cats, and sufficient organizational chaos.
Anne FadimanCats have a contempt of speech. Why should they talk when they can communicate without words?
Lilian Jackson BraunThe wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats. Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows' Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked.
Ray Bradbury