Answering The Phone Quotes

If I ran the country there'd be courses in things that you'd actually use your whole life. Like: How to do eyeliner. How to fill in a tax return. What to do when your loo blocks and your dad isn't answering the phone and you're about to have a party. ~ Sophie Kinsella

A lesson is learned. It is easier, more efficient, to chop onions when you are only chopping onions, not conversing, checking up on the rest of the kitchen, answering the phone, flirting with the young lady scouring the coffeepot, or whatever. ~ Dinty W. Moore

The thing about caller ID is," Red said, more or less to himself, "it seems a little like cheating. A person should be willing to take his chances, answering the phone. ~ Anne Tyler

The telephone hardly ever rings but when it does, there is a good chance it is someone asking me how I am, and if I really tried to answer that question I suppose I could say I'm doing as well and as terribly as I ever have been, but if you stop answering questions, people stop asking them, and if you stop answering the phone, it eventually stops ringing.
A month goes by, you think – Oh, I've finally done it. ~ Catherine Lacey

The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship. Shipping means hitting the publish button on your blog, showing a presentation to the sales team, answering the phone, selling the muffins, sending out your references. Shipping is the collision between your work and the outside world. ~ Seth Godin

I'm always working. I don't really set limits. I tend to go in bursts. And in between, I'm doing my taxes, answering the phone, and all those kinds of things. I waste a lot of time. Computers take a lot of time. I love computers. ~ Richard Dooling

I was working in a church in Florida as a youth intern, which means I really didn't do much other than staple stuff. I'm from Dallas, Texas, and every time my grandmother would call-she would call me any time of the day-I'd be home answering the phone. She was like, "What do you do all day?" and sarcastically I would say, "Well, I'm trying to chalk off the next year to spend time finding a band name." And she said, "Well mercy me, why don't you get a real job?" I thought, "Wait a minute. That's the perfect name." That kind of freed up my year but that's where the name came from. ~ Bart Millard

Anxiety

I struggle with things that are as easy to others as breathing.

Like breathing. Like answering the phone. Or sending that email I have been meaning to for weeks.

I panic when I am asked out to dinner, even if it's with someone I really want to see.

It's hard for me to commit to anything, and when I do, I overthink it until my brain tells me I have made a mistake, like a rat caught in a maze, trying to claw its way out.

I don't know why I am like this. People ask me why I can't do anything without jumping through a thousand thoughts, like hoops. But sometimes I wonder if my inability to function in the real world is really such a bad thing. I wonder if that's why I've spent so much time sheltered in my imagination.

And because I can't live in the real world, I create worlds to belong to. And I wonder if the very thing I've always been told is my weakness, has all along, been my strength. ~ Lang Leav

If you're not popular, then everyone is not wanting anything to do with you, or not answering the phone. ~ Hilary Duff

Keep getting asked by letter and on the street by Jane and John Does dressed in spandex how they can prepare simple "gourmet" dinners in ten minutes so as to prolong, presumably, their cross-training and spritzer-drinking binges, massage and colonic appointments, drumming and marriage-counseling sessions, and tarot-card swap clubs. An easy answer here. Scoop ample quantities of Skippy on two paper plates. Handcuff each other and then slam your faces down into the plates with gusto. Good for the gluteus maximus. And it will bring you together at the sink, plus you won't have to violate your space by answering the phone. Back to the ~ Jim Harrison

At this point I feel I would be remiss to not mention the prevalence of a specific kind of person who enters the field of book publishing. This is the English lit major who never should have left academia, a genius who has read all of V.S. Naipaul but can't photocopy title pages right side up. This person is very thin, possibly vegan, probably Ivy League. He or she feels as if answering the phone in a chipper voice is a form of legalized prostitution. He or she has a single quirky fashion piece, usually red or black, and waxes poetic about typewriters and the British, having never truly known either. Regardless of sex, they all want to be David Foster Wallace when they grow up. ~ Sloane Crosley

We are overeducated pharmacy clerks (with doctorate degrees) answering the phone, running the cash register, ringing up donuts and dish soap while juggling 10 or more drug related issues per minute with our one technician yelling Override! ~ Dennis Miller

when i left them, i painted myself burgundy and grey
i stopped saying the words "please" and "i'm sorry"
i walked into grocery stores and bought too many
clementines, ordered too much Chinese, spent my
last four dollars on over the counter sleeping pills
that made my stomach bleed but my soul forget
every time i wanted to tell you "i'm sorry", i wrote
you a poem instead, i said things like "i hope your
mother calls you beautiful" to strangers and when
boys with dry hands and broken eyes asked me on
dates i didn't hesitate no, didn't even stop them
when their hands grazed my breasts and when
they moaned my name against my thighs i cried
i opened the mail and didn't tell anyone for a week
that i got accepted into law school, i stopped watering
the plants and filled the bathtub with roses and milk,
when i got invited to parties, i wore blue jeans with
white shirts, sat alone in some kitchen drinking hard
liquor until some boys mouth made me feel like home
i stopped answering the phone for a month, i didn't
like how my name tasted in his mouth but he was
older and didn't say things like "it doesn't matter"
and i think i went insane, my heart boiled blisters, i
couldn't understand why my bones felt like cages,
i walked around art museums until closing, watched
them lock up the gates and then open them up
again the very same morning, i thought ~ Irynka

You could consider the idea of the multiverse, and think of it as something like a tree - that is, the universe we live in is one of an uncountable number of branches of possible universes, created by random chance and the decisions of sentient beings. So, for instance, when I rang you up in the morning, there was a possible future universe in which you answered the phone, and another in which you did not, and by answering the phone you put us in one universe and not the other. In that instance the time traveler doesn't just move from the future to the past and back to the future: he moves down one branch of the universe, toward the root that's back at the beginning of time, and back up another branch. ~ Dexter Palmer

Nick's job is super dull. He mostly takes care of answering the phone and doing filing, and stapling things. Sometimes the things don't even need stapling, but Nick does it anyway. He makes shiny little railroad tracks along the tops of documents. His record is thirty-eight staples on one thing. Then he picked thirty-seven of them out again because he remembered he was supposed to be professional.
Adulting is hard.
The struggle is real. ~ Lisa Henry

Don't ever cancel my call again! I told you I would talk to you, you should have waited ... "
Shit. Shit. Shit.
"Mr. Edge, it is 5pm, I assumed my working day was done and I cancelled the phone call by accident, this phone is new, still working it out" I made it up as I went along and was surprised by my ability to lie on my feet.
"Melissa, don't play stupid. Get your arse back here or I will hunt it down and drag it back" He ordered and made me hold my breath ~ Mercy Cortez

The givers and keepers of Gogol's name are far from him now. One dead. Another, a widow, on the verge of a different sort of departure, in order to dwell, as his father does, in a separate world. She will call him, once a week, on the phone. She will learn to send e-mail, she says. Once or twice a week, he will hear "Gogol" over the wires, see it typed on a screen. As for all the people in the house, all the mashis and meshos to whom he is still, and will always be, Gogol - now that his mother is moving away, how often will he see them? Without people in the world to call him Gogol, no matter how long he himself lives, Gogol Ganguli will, once and for all, vanish from the lips of loved ones, and so, cease to exist. Yet the thought of this eventual demise provides no sense of victory, no solace. It provides no solace at all. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

Missing someone is the worst form of torture because it never goes away no matter where you are or what you do with your life. When a person is gone and all you have of them is a fuzzy recollection of what it was like to hear your phone buzz with texts from them, the joy you experienced while in their company, that instance when the bond you shared shattered, you long for all that was lost and could've been gained. You have memories and nothing more. And no matter how much times passes, you still feel the ache of their absence whenever they rise into your thoughts. Torture. ~ Caroline George

Most of us probably fall several times a day into a fit somewhat like this: The eyes are fixed on vacancy, the sounds of the world melt into a confused unity, the attention is dispersed so that the whole body is felt, as it were, at once, and the foreground of consciousness is filled, if by anything, by a sort of solemn sense of surrender to the empty passing of time. In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start; the pensée de derrière la tête [thought at the back of the head] fails to pierce the shell of lethargy that wraps our state about. Every moment we expect the shell to break, for we know no reason why it should continue. But it does continue, pulse after pulse, and we float with it, until - also without reason that we can discover - an energy is given, something - we know not what - enables us to gather ourselves together, we wink our eyes, we shake our head, the background ideas become effective, and the wheels of life go round again. ~ William James

My cell phone fell off my lap. I was reaching for it in the back. ~ Eddie Griffin

I'd learn over time to insist on chatting by phone before hooking up. It was prudent, I thought, to see if the guy sounded like the type who might ejaculate and then murder me in the throes of shame, or lock me in his basement for the remainder of my life, or hold me down and rape me. Or drill holes in my head and inject boiling water and hydrochloric acid into my brain, the way Jeffrey Dahmer did with his hook-ups to try and turn them into sex zombies. ~ Drew Nellins Smith

I refuse to answer the phone, especially when it's not questioning (ringing). ~ Jarod Kintz

Getting back to the issue of the child," Tina said, harshing our buzz as visual, "I really think you should reconsider. He - "
The phone rang. She picked it up, glanced at the caller ID.
"We're kind of busy," I said, a little sharply. The phone was a whole thing between Tina and me.
"But - "
"If it's important, they'll call back."
"But it's your mother."
I practically snarled. The phone, the fucking phone! People used it the way they used to use the cat-o'-nine-tails. You had to drop everything and answer the fucking thing. And God help you if you were home and, for whatever reason, didn't answer. "But I called!" Yeah, it was convenient for you so you called. But I'm in the shit because it wasn't convenient for me to drop everything and talk to you, on the spot, for whatever you needed to talk about. ~ MaryJanice Davidson

I've heard plenty of Christians try to answer the why question by going back to the what. "You have to believe because Jesus is the Son of God." But that's answering the why with more what. Increasingly we live in a time in which you can't avoid the why question. Just giving the what (for example, a vivid gospel presentation) worked in the days when the cultural institutions created an environment in which Christianity just felt true or at least honorable. But in a post-Christendom society, in the marketplace of ideas, you have to explain why this is true, or people will just dismiss it. ~ Timothy Keller

If God calls you, pick up the damn phone! ~ Lady G

To a woman, being married means you do not under any circumstances put your penis in another woman's vagina. It also means no blowjobs, no oral, no anal, no phone sex, no sex of any kind, ever, with anyone other than your wife for as long as you're married. As soon as you say 'I do', it means that where other women are concern 'I don't' is the only correct response. If you play by these rules, you're safe. If you don't, we leave. It's really that simple. ~ Helen Argiro

Kindness works simply and perseveringly; it produces no strained relations which prejudice its working; strained relations which already exist it relaxes. Mistrust and misunderstanding it puts to flight, and it strengthens itself by calling forth answering kindness. Hence it is the furthest reaching and the most effective of all forces. ~ Albert Schweitzer

You're late." Kat said as soon as Hale put the phone to his ear. She wasn't the kind of girl to wait for hello.
"What can I say? Macey McHenry has been throwing herself at me ... "
"See, that's the kind of thing that would make me jealous if she weren't way out of your league."
"You know, if I had feelings, that might have hurt them. ~ Ally Carter

Say, do, or make it now. Go where you need to be. Do not wait to be invited places. Host your own parties. Do not sit by the phone. ~ Jessica Hagy

Experiments show that children in unsupervised groups are capable of answering questions many years ahead of the material they're learning in school. In fact, they seem to enjoy the absence of adult supervision, and they are very confident of finding the right answer. ~ Sugata Mitra

The phone rings.
"Asshole," she mutters. She picks it up.
"Will you let me explain?"
"No." She hangs up. ~ Lisa McMann

Current intelligence-testing practices require examinees to answer but not to pose questions. In requiring only the answering of questions, these tests are missing a vital half of intelligence- the asking of questions ... ~ Robert Sternberg

I was on one of my fruitarian diets" Steve Jobs recalled "I had just comeback from the apple farm. It sounded fun, spirited, and not intimidating. Apple took the edge of the word 'computer', plus it would get us a head of Atari in the phone book. He told Wozniak if a better name did not hit them by the next afternoon, they would just stick with apple and they did. 1 Apr 1976 ~ Walter Isaacson

I only do numbers/acts that excite me, or I connect to personally. I never phone it in. It's about finding the balance between what my audience wants and what I want to give them. That sweet spot in the vendiagram. ~ Jinkx Monsoon

There's some idea there, and the power of it comes from the fact that most of the time you'll never be able to answer what it is. It's just there. It's just a magic moment that you can feel in your gut that it's there, and you're willing to go there and sleep there and go through the hardship and fight for it. Once you start answering it too clearly then the magic is gone. ~ Kalle Lasn

Pink was for girls.
Girly girls who wore flavored lip gloss and read magazines and talked on the phone lying on their perfect, lacy bedspreads with their feet in the air. Girls who spent six months looking for the perfect dress to wear to the school formal.
Girls who liked boys. ~ Lili Wilkinson

During the Mavelmania days in the late '60's I got a phone call one evening and I answered it and this voice said, "Mike Royer? This is Jack Kirby. Word is you're a pretty good inker." That's how it started. ~ Mike Royer

Recreational talking is, along with private singing, one of our saddest recent losses. Like singing, talking has become a job for trained professionals, who are paid considerable sums of money to do it on television and radio while we sit silently listening or, if we're truly lonely and determined, call the station and sit holding the phone waiting for a chance to contribute our two cents' worth. ~ Barbara Holland

Nearly a Valediction"

You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I've ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange air I was that alone
again, inventing life left after you.

I don't want to remember you as that
four o'clock in the morning eight months long
after you happened to me like a wrong
number at midnight that blew up the phone
bill to an astronomical unknown
quantity in a foreign currency.
The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me.
You've grown into your skin since then; you've grown
into the space you measure with someone
you can love back without a caveat.

While I love somebody I learn to live
with through the downpulled winter days' routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She'll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn't know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive

you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your m ~ Marilyn Hacker

Ren crossed his arms over his chest. "is it LoJacked?"
"Of course," Andy said indignantly. "That's my baby. I even have a kill switch on her."
"Then stop the engine."
Andy appeared downright horrified by Ren's suggestion. "Are you out of your mind? What if someone hits it for stalling? I had that thing on order for over a year. Custom hand built. The epitome of German engineering. I even paid extra for the paint on her. Ain't no way I'm going to chance someone denting my baby. Or, God forbid, totaling it."
Jess rolled his eyes at the boy's hissy fit. If he kept that up, he'd be putting Andy back in diapers.
He turned to Ren. "You take the air. I'll get a bike." Then he focused his attention on Andy again. "And you-"
Andy held his cell phone out to him. "Have an app. Track her down, get my car back, and beat the hell out of her ... in that precise order. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

IT IS POSSIBLY WORTH MENTIONING THAT IN FAT CHARLIE'S world, women did not simply turn up. You needed to be introduced to them; you needed to pluck up the courage to talk to them; you needed to find a subject to talk about when you did, and then, once you had achieved those heights, there were further peaks to scale. You needed to dare to ask them if they were doing anything on Saturday night, and then when you did, mostly they had hair that needed washing that night, or diaries to update, or cockatiels to groom, or they simply needed to wait by the phone for some other man not to call. ~ Neil Gaiman

When [an abusive man] tells me that he became abusive because he lost control of himself, I ask him why he didn't do something even worse. For example, I might say, "You called her a fucking whore, you grabbed the phone out of her hand and whipped it across the room, and then you gave her a shove and she fell down. There she was at your feet where it would have been easy to kick her in the head. Now, you have just finished telling me that you were 'totally out of control' at that time, but you didn't kick her. What stopped you?" And the client can always give me a reason. Here are some common explanations:

"I wouldn't want to cause her a serious injury."
"I realized one of the children was watching."
"I was afraid someone would call the police."
"I could kill her if I did that."
"The fight was getting loud, and I was afraid the neighbors would hear."

And the most frequent response of all:

"Jesus, I wouldn't do that. I would never do something like that to her."

The response that I almost never heard – I remember hearing it twice in the fifteen years – was: "I don't know."

These ready answers strip the cover off of my clients' loss of control excuse. ~ Lundy Bancroft

I love the romance of the '40s. It was the perfect time to live. Technology wasn't so advanced that it made life more difficult, but it was just enough that you can send a phone call or a telegram. And people still took pride in how they looked. The men got dressed up and the women got dressed up and they took care of themselves. ~ Bethany Joy Lenz

The clothes are packed off to Goodwill
I said my good-byes up on the hill
The house is empty, the furniture sold
Soon your smell will decay to mold
Don't know why I bother calling, ain't nobody answering
Don't know why I bother singing, ain't nobody listening
"Disconnect"
Collateral Damage, Track 10 ~ Gayle Forman

People have forgotten to use their memories. They look at life through the lens of a camera or the screen of a cell phone instead of remembering how it looks, how it smells ~ Jamie McGuire

Adam's apple is still front and center in the photo, unmistakable. I suppose Vic and Virgil could be twins. But still. I grab my cell phone and punch in the number on the screen. Three rings later, I hear someone grab the receiver on the other end. It sounds like it falls to the floor with a run of static and curses, and then is recovered. "What." "Is this Mr. Stanhope?" I whisper. "Yeah," the voice growls. "Virgil Stanhope?" There is a pause. "Not anymore," the voice slurs, and he hangs up. My pulse is racing. Either Virgil Stanhope is back from the dead or he never was dead. Maybe he just wanted people to think ~ Jodi Picoult

First of all, I would like to thank the judge for that question, and I would like to thank this pageant for the opportunity to answer, and I would like to thank God for giving me the wisdom to answer the question, and I would like to thank my parents for giving me the confidence in answering the question with the answer which God gave me in order to answer the question given by the judge of this pageant. Thank you. ~ Carlos Malvar

I leave the number and a short
message on every green Volvo
in town

Is anything wrong?
I miss you.
574-7423

The phone rings constantly.
One says, Are you bald?
Another, How tall are you in
your stocking feet?

Most just reply, Nothing's wrong.
I miss you, too.

Come quick. ~ Ronald Koertge

Fangtasia, where all your bloody dreams come true,' said a bored female voice.
'Pam. Listen.'
'The phone is pressed to my ear. Speak.'
'Appius Livius Ocella just dropped in.'
'Fuck a zombie! ~ Charlaine Harris

I dug the untraceable phone Patch had given me out of my handbag and dialled his number.
"I have a free couple of hours," I told him, walking toward my car, which was parked on the next block. "There's a very dark, very secluded barn in Lookout Hill Park behind the carousel. I could be there in fifteen minutes."
I heard the smile in his voice."You want me bad."
"I need and an endorphin boost."
"And making out in an abandoned barn with me will give you one?"
"No, it will probably put me in an endorphin coma, and I'm more than happy to test the theory. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick