Answering Machine Quotes

There are things I've given up on
Like recording funny answering machine messages.
It's part of growing older
And the human race as a group has matured along the same lines.
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes
I hope you won't be insulted
if I say you're trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live
seem slow-witted and obvious now. ~ David Berman

She stared at me "You have a message," she said. "On you machine."
I looked over at my answering machine. Sure enough, the light was blinking. The woman really was a detective.
"It's some girl," La Guerta said. "She sounds kind of sleepy and happy. You got a girlfriend, Dexter?" there was a strange hint of a challenge in her voice.
"You know how it is," I said. "Women today are so forward, and when you are as handsome as I am they absolutely fling themselves at your head." Perhaps an unfortunate choice of words; as I said it I couldn't help thinking of the woman's head flung at me not so long ago.
"Watch out," La Guerta said. "Sooner or later one of them will stick." I had no idea what she thought that meant, but it was a very unsettling image.
"I'm sure you're right," I said. "Until then, carpe diem."
"What?"
"It's Latin," I said. "It means, complain in the daylight. ~ Jeff Lindsay

You've reached Fangtasia, where the undead live again every night ... For bar hours, press one. To make a party reservation, press two. To talk to a live person or a dead vampire, press three. Or, if you were intending to leave a humorous prank message on our answering machine, know this: we will find you.
-Pam ~ Charlaine Harris

I have an answering machine in my car. It says, I'm home now. But leave a message and I'll call when I'm out. ~ Steven Wright

I had a friend at Princeton, a Russian graduate student. He had a cute message on his answering machine, delivered in his thick Russian accent: Who are you and what do you want? Some people spend a lifetime trying to answer these questions. You, however, have thirty seconds. My father and I chuckled. What happened to him? Gone. My point is that you could think of the people you meet in your life as questions, there to help you figure out who you are, what you're made of, and what you want. In life, as in our new version of the game, you start off not knowing the answer. It's only when the particles rub against each other that we figure out their properties. ~ Zia Haider Rahman

While she'd been drying her hair, she'd come up with a new message for her answering machine - "I'm out, deliberately avoiding your call" - and that simple burst of creativity had raised her spirits a bit. ~ Carrie Fisher

I'm not an answering machine, I'm a questioning machine. If we have all the answers, how come we're in such as mess? ~ Douglas Cardinal

I let it ring. I wanted to breathe for a few minutes, and I could think of nothing that couldn't wait. Besides, I had paid almost $50 for an answering machine. Let it earn its keep. ~ Jeff Lindsay

Did you ever hear one of those corny, positive messages on someone's answering machine? 'Hi, it's a great day and I'm out enjoying it right now. I hope you are too. The thought for the day is share the love. Beep.' 'Uh, yeah, this is the VD clinic ... speaking of being positive, your test is back. Stop sharing the love. ~ Andy Rooney

I'm not good at texting because I'm an older generation, old school. And nobody ever listens to the answering machine anymore. It's terrible. ~ Igor Levit

You wonder if God doesn't have an answering machine to screen out the prayers of the venal and the boring? And in which category has he placed you? ~ Tom Robbins

In most cases, it is more satisfying to get a friend's answering machine and leave a cheery, tangible trace of your sincere commitment to the friendship than it is to engage in actual conversation. ~ Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Not saving you from this storm, mutant," he said. "Saving you for your later fate, we are."
His voice was weirdly inflected and metallic, like an automated answering machine.
"Oh, good. Yoda captured us," Fang whispered. ~ James Patterson

Some consciences are fitted with automatic answering machine that work very well. But I never got the technology under control ~ Romain Gary

Texting is a lot like an answering machine. If you don't want to talk to somebody, it's like screening your calls. To me, it's a way of communication, but not one that I favor. ~ Pat Gillick

Everybody has a 'gripping stranger' in their lives, Andy, a stranger who unwittingly possesses a bizarre hold over you. Maybe it's the kid in cut-offs who mows your lawn or the woman wearing White Shoulders who stamps your book at the library - a stranger who, if you were to come home and find a message from them on your answering machine saying 'Drop everything. I love you. Come away with me now to Florida,' you'd follow them. ~ Douglas Coupland

No one is calling me. I can't check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while I'm out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in. ~ Lydia Davis

She had started driving past his apartment to see whether or not his car was out front. She had looked up his phone number, and twice she had called his apartment from the pay phone in school, knowing he wouldn't be at home, just so she could hear how sexy his voice sounded on his answering machine. Was this what falling in love was supposed to feel like? ~ Francine Pascal

I'm much better at saying something on the answering machine than texting. ~ Igor Levit

Death does that to us, it's like a phone call, you always remember exactly what you should have said the moment you hang up. Now there's just an answering machine full of memories on the other end, fragments of a voice that are getting weaker and weaker. ~ Fredrik Backman

I'm definitely a child of the 21st century and I prefer texting to phone calls, but I would prefer an answering machine over all. ~ Brendan Dooling

Eventually he'd let the answering machine take over and had hidden in his studio. Where he's hidden all his life. From the monster.
He could feel itin their bedroom now. He could feel its tail swishing by him. Feel its hot, fetid breath.
All his life he knew if he was quiet enough, small enough, it wouldnn't see him. If he didn't make a fuss, didn't speak up, it wouldn't hear him, wouldn't hurt him. If he was beyond criticism and hid his cruelty with a smile and good deeds, it wouldn't devour him.
By now he realized there was no hiding. It would always be there, and always find him.
He was the monster. ~ Louise Penny

He suddenly remembered the tape he had taken from Susan's answering machine, and hoped to God there wasn't anything more important in Gordon's message than ravings about rabbits. ~ Douglas Adams

I got an answering machine for my phone ... Now, when I'm not home and somebody calls me up ... they hear a recording of a busy signal. ~ Steven Wright

I draw a line down the middle of a chalkboard, sketching a male symbol on one side and a female symbol on the other. Then I ask just the men: What steps do you guys take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? At first there is a kind of awkward silence as the men try to figure out if they've been asked a trick question. The silence gives way to a smattering of nervous laughter. Occasionally, a young a guy will raise his hand and say, 'I stay out of prison.' This is typically followed by another moment of laughter, before someone finally raises his hand and soberly states, 'Nothing. I don't think about it.' Then I ask women the same question. What steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? Women throughout the audience immediately start raising their hands. As the men sit in stunned silence, the women recount safety precautions they take as part of their daily routine. Here are some of their answers: Hold my keys as a potential weapon. Look in the back seat of the car before getting in. Carry a cell phone. Don't go jogging at night. Lock all the windows when I sleep, even on hot summer nights. Be careful not to drink too much. Don't put my drink down and come back to it; make sure I see it being poured. Own a big dog. Carry Mace or pepper spray. Have an unlisted phone number. Have a man's voice on my answering machine. Park in well-lit areas. Don't use parking garages. Don't get on elevators with onl ~ Jackson Katz

In the apartment, the answering machine blinked fiercely, two gnats drag-raced around the apparently sweet, rotting hole of the kitchen drain, and life was difficult once again, and familiar, and a disappointment. ~ Meg Wolitzer

It's just that it's a good idea not to let him have your phone number unless you possess an industrial-grade answering machine." "What? Why's that?" "Well, he's one of those people who can only think when he's talking. When he has ideas, he has to talk them out to whoever will listen. Or, if the people themselves are not available, which is increasingly the case, their answering machines will do just as well. He just phones them up and talks at them. He has one secretary whose sole job is to collect tapes from people he might have phoned, transcribe them, sort them and give him the edited text the next day in a blue folder. ~ Douglas Adams

Honey And The Moon"

Don't know why I'm still afraid
If you weren't real I would make you up now
I wish that I could follow through
I know that your love is true
And deep
As the sea
But right now
Everything you want is wrong,
And right now
All your dreams are waking up,
And right now
I wish I could follow you
To the shores
Of freedom,
Where no one lives.

Remember when we first met
And everything was still a bet
In love's game
You would call; I'd call you back
And then I'd leave
A message
On your answering machine

But right now
Everything is turning blue,
And right now
The sun is trying to kill the moon,
And right now
I wish I could follow you
To the shores
Of freedom,
Where no one lives

Freedom
Run away tonight
Freedom, freedom
Run away
Run away tonight

We're made out of blood and rust
Looking for someone to trust
Without
A fight
I think that you came too soon
You're the honey and the moon
That lights
Up my night

But right now
Everything you want is wrong,
And right now
All your dreams are waking up,
And right now
I wish that I could follow you
To the shores
Of freedom
Where no one lives

Freedom
Run away tonight
Freedom freedom
Run away
Run away tonig ~ Joseph Arthur

The breakup of Bell laid the foundation for every important communications revolution since the 1980s onward. There was no way of knowing that thirty years on we would have an Internet, handheld computers, and social networking, but it is hard to imagine their coming when they did, had the company that bured the answering machine remained intact. ~ Tim Wu

I do have a huge problem, a huge problem. In fact, worse than watching is hearing. I cannot stand to hear my own voice. When it's coming out of my mouth right now it sounds fantastically interesting to me. It's rich in light and shade, it goes up and down. But when I hear it either on TV or even on someone's answering machine, I just sound like I've had half my brain removed. ~ Hugh Laurie

Grown-ups aren't supposed to talk about "best friends," but he was among my closest and certainly my most constant friend from then until we were well into our thirties, when he inexplicably disappeared on me. I don't mean he fled the country or changed his identity or got abducted; the last I heard he was still living in Baltimore. He just stopped returning my calls. It took me almost a year of leaving messages on his answering machine to get the hint. It took me much longer to understand that I was never going to know what had happened. ~ Tim Kreider

My favorite films, I would put my answering machine up to the television set and hit record. I'd tape my favorite movies and then I could go back and listen to them again. I only had the soundtrack, I didn't have the visuals. But I think it made me really pay attention to the soundtracks. ~ Mark Mothersbaugh

All the new technology seems redundant to me. I was quite happy with the United States mail service. And, I don't even have an answering machine, for God's sake. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I don't really have time to sit down and write. But when I think of a melody, I call up my answering machine and sing it, so I won't forget it. ~ Britney Spears

I think about the automobile, I think about like, when I was a kid, you know, the invention of the answering machine, which I was like, 'Wow.' Or call waiting, which was, like, very big. It was a very big thing. Call waiting was a very big thing. And these incremental innovations happen constantly. ~ Ashton Kutcher

I don't even like hearing my own voice on an answering machine. ~ China Chow

I have a friend of mine who does me on his answering machine, and when I call him, I answer. It's pretty strange. ~ Christopher Walken

Do you ever leave a message for somebody and the answering machine cuts you off, and you have to decide whether you should not call back, or call back and appear like a stalker? "Hi. It's me again. I forgot to tell you that I'm going to kill you. Because I'm the freak who keeps calling and calling." ~ Jim Gaffigan

To find out if she really loved me, I hooked her up to a lie detector. And just as I suspected, my machine was broken. ~ Dark Jar Tin Zoo

People prophesized doom at the hands of a soulless machine. But apparently the machine had a purer soul than any human. It watched the world from millions of eyes, listened from millions of ears. I either acted, or chose not to act on, the countless things it perceived. ~ Neal Shusterman

The last 100 years of research into the human brain ... sees the brain as an organ that works by physical principles just like the other organs in the body ... our emotions and higher callings, such as religion, as well as our grubby low-level physical systems like stereo vision and motor control, are products of a machine ... ~ Steven Pinker

The fairest state of them all, this tranquil and beloved domain - what has it now become? A nursery for Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas. A monstrous breeding farm to supply the sinew to gratify the maw of Eli Whitney's infernal machine, cursed be that blackguard's name! In such a way is our human decency brought down, when we pander all that is in us noble and just to the false god which goes by the vile name of Capital! Oh, Virginia, woe betide thee! Woe, thrice woe, and ever damned in memory be the day when poor black men in chains first trod upon thy sacred strand! ~ William Styron

I feel like she's more cut out to be an employee at the inn than a hunter risking life and limb for money, but I'm sure she has her own thoughts on that. ~ Hirukuma

What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. ~ Oscar Wilde

A photograph is a kind of time machine. ~ Nicola Yoon

For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. ~ Max Weber

The civilisation of the West has in it the spirit of the machine which must move; and to that blind movement human lives are offered as fuel, keeping up the steam-power. It represents the active aspect of inertia which has the appearance of freedom, but not its truth, and therefore gives rise to slavery both within its boundaries and outside. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

What?" my partner asked suddenly.
I jumped, guilty at having been caught staring. But, hell, I thought, might as well ask. "Are you two
you know?" I made a vaguely obscene gesture with my fingers.
He stopped walking so fast I was shocked he didn't get whiplash. "What?"
I waved toward the building. "You and Shandi."
Instead of answering, he threw his head back and brayed like the jackass he was. ~ Jaye Wells

This is a funny story. We'd asked the guards every day for cappuccino. You know, just as a joke. And they'd come in with their cups of coffee and stuff. And so I get here and I have a spot for a cappuccino machine, and it didn't work. So I don't have any cappuccino ... I didn't miss the cappuccino, I missed the idea of cappuccino. ~ Martha Stewart

Philosophy, as long as a drop of blood shall pulse in its world-subduing and absolutely free heart, will never grow tired of answering its adversaries with the cry of Epicurus:
"Not the man who denies the gods worshiped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them, is truly impious"
Philosophy makes no secret of it. The confession of Prometheus:
"In simple words, I hate the pack of gods"
is its own confession, its own aphorism against all heavenly and earthly gods who do not acknowledge human self-consciousness as the highest divinity. ~ Karl Marx

I know for my family, the only question that we will be answering is how many people are in our home. We won't be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that. ~ Michele Bachmann

The Byzantines are logical and organized. They operate like a machine, like a catapult, for example. Everything works well when all steps take place as they should. But they are trained to follow rules, not to think for themselves. We, on the other hand, are good at improvising but lack control, we are, to a great extent, undisciplined, but have unity of Cause. ~ John Elray

The chrysanthemums' astringent fragrance comes
Each year to disguise the clanking mechanism
Of machine within machine within machine. ~ Wallace Stevens

White supremacy is the conscious or unconscious belief or the investment in the inherent superiority of some, while others are believed to be innately inferior. And it doesn't demand the individual participation of the singular bigot. It is a machine operating in perpetuity, because it doesn't demand that somebody be in place driving. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

I never really even tried. But if I'm not a New York actress, what am I? I'm a person who takes a subway from the outer boroughs to lower Manhattan office every morning, who spends her days answering phones and doing copying, who is too disconsolate when she gets back to her apartment at night to do anything but sit on the couch and stare vacantly at reality TV shows until she falls asleep. Oh Godm it really was true, wasn't it? I really was a secretary. ~ Julie Powell

If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era,
then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem. ~ John Jay Chapman

And so the point of this story is that when I first met you at the photocopy machine, sure, we talked like a telethon and everything, but the perfume you were wearing then - that perfume was the smell of my stamp album, the smell of countries I always wanted to visit but never thought I'd be able to. It was like you had the world inside you. ~ Douglas Coupland

Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn't matter how beautifully you performed _sometimes_, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren't a painter or a writer
you didn't work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn't just your masterpieces that counted. What mattered, as for any machine, was repeatability. Moments of inspiration were nothing compared to elimination of error. The scouts cared little for Henry's superhuman grace; insofar as they cared they were suckered-in aesthetes and shitty scouts. Can you perform on demand, like a car, a furnace, a gun? Can you make that throw one hundred times out of a hundred? If it can't be a hundred, it had better be ninety-nine. ~ Chad Harbach

It's a universal law that if you unscrew or unbolt more than 10 parts from any machine that there is only a 3% chance that it will ever go back together again and work. ~ Conrad Cooper

It's wrong because if you pick up a rifle, the Man picks up a machine gun, by the time you find some machine gun he's all set up to shoot rockets, begin to see a pattern? ~ Thomas Pynchon

Pet the cat dude," says Sam. "She brought you a present. She wants you to tell her how badass she is."
"You are a tiny tiny killing machine." Daneca coos.
"What's she doing?" I ask.
"Purring!" says Daneca. She sounds delighted. "Good kitty. Who's an amazing killing machine? That's right. You are! You are a brutal brutal tiny lion! Yes, you are. ~ Holly Black

Just a dozen of high quality qudits will be sufficient to simulate the state of 100 billion neurons of human brain for quantum machine learning. ~ Amit Ray

Let the machine take care of the machines, and I'll go spend more time with my family, or golf. ~ Mark Goddard

[A] central theme is why social, political, and economic institutions tend to coevolve in a manner that reinforces rather than undermines one another. The welfare state is not 'politics against markets,' as commonly assumed, but politics with markets. Although it is popular to think that markets, especially global ones, interfere with the welfare state, and vice versa, this notion is simply inconsistent with the postwar record of actual welfare state development. The United States, which has a comparatively small welfare state and flexible labor markets, has performed well in terms of jobs and growth during the past two decades; however, before then the countries with the largest welfare states and the most heavily regulated labor markets exceeded those in the United States on almost any gauge of economic competitiveness and performance.

Despite the change in economic fortunes, the relationship between social protection and product market strategies continues to hold. Northern Europe and Japan still dominate high-quality markets for machine tools and consumer durables, whereas the United States dominates software, biotech, and other high-tech industries. There is every reason that firms and governments will try to preserve the institutions that give rise to these comparative advantages, and here the social protection system (broadly construed to include job security and protection through the industrial relations system) plays a key role. The reason is that social ~ Torben Iversen

You can say, 'Can I use your bathroom?' and nobody cares. But if you ask, 'Can I use the plop-plop machine?' it always breaks the conversation. ~ Dave Attell

When there is love, there is no duty. When you love your wife, you share everything with her-your property, your trouble, your anxiety, your joy.
You do not dominate. You are not the man and she is not the woman to be used and thrown aside, a sort of breeding machine to carry on your name.
When there is love, the word duty disappears. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

I turned to Kitty Sue and surprised myself by answering honestly, "I'm fine. Lee's fine. Lee's more fine than me. I'm having troubles adjusting. Lee seems pretty sure of himself. Lee seems pretty sure of everything."

This, I realized, was true about Lee always. I'd never met someone as confident in my life. Well, maybe Hank, but Hank's confidence was quiet and assured. And there was Lee's best friend, Eddie, of course. But Eddie was like Lee's twin, separated at birth, cut from the same cloth. Lee's confidence, and Eddie's, wasn't like Hank's. It was cocky and assertive.

"And you aren't sure?" Kitty Sue asked.

I looked at her and thought maybe I should have lied. It was too late now.

"Nope. He scares me," I admitted.

She nodded. "Yep, he's pretty dang scary."

I stared. My God, the woman was talking about her son.

"You agree?"

She looked at Lee then back at me. "Honey, that boy drives me to distraction. It's like he's not of my loins. I don't even know where he came from. If Ally hadn't been the exact replica of Lee, personality-wise, except female I would have wondered if there was a mix up at the hospital."

I kept staring. Kitty Sue kept talking.

"Hank's just like his Dad. Smart, cautious, controlled, taking only calculated risks. I'm sure Lee calculates his risks, but I think he allows for a much larger margin for error and counts on ... I don't know what he counts ~ Kristen Ashley

Nothing happens in the brain, except the gradual rust and detrition of the cells. But in the mind, worlds unclassified, undenominated, unassimilated, form, break, unite, dissolve, and harmonize ceaselessly. In the mind-world ideas are the indestructible elements which form the jeweled constellations of the interior life. We move within their orbits freely if we follow their intricate patterns, enslaved or possessed if we try to subjugate them. Everything external is but a reflection projected by the mind machine. ~ Henry Miller

I was raised on Nirvana and flannel shirts and Rage Against the Machine, and I sort of describe my youth as rebellious and always fighting the system. ~ Casey Neistat

The polygrapher is not one's friend even if he or she tries to convince one he or she is on one's side. Outright deception! What the polygrapher frequently does is attempt to plant fear in the 'interviewee' by hyping the accuracy of the polygraph machine. For the love of God the polygraph machine isn't God! The more one's afraid that the skeletons in one's closet would be unearthed; the greater one's physiological reactions would turn out. Enough! ~ S.A. David