Phone Book Quotes

I come from the Lynchs of Sligo. You know, I went there, but I looked in the phone book and there are nine million Lynches in Sligo. ~ Jack Nicholson

I went through every phone book in Africa, and I didn't find one god damned Pryor! ~ Richard Pryor

If I'm not clear with the character, I can't do anything with it. But once I get that character, the possibilities are endless. When you have such a defined character, I feel like I can actually read the phone book and make it funny. ~ Eliza Coupe

BTW A 24 week old embryo is not a human being. You're not a human being until you're in my phone book. ~ Bill Hicks

I read everything! I would have read the phone book if you put it in front of me. I just read. ~ Diana Vreeland

No," I said automatically, "don't do anything about Dad. You can't fix my relationship with him."
"I can block or run interference."
"Thanks, Jack, but I don't need blocking, and I really don't need any more interference."
He looked annoyed. "Well, why did you waste all that time complaining to me if you didn't want me to do something about it?"
"I don't want you to fix my problems. I just wanted you to listen."
"Hang it all, Haven, talk to a girlfriend if all you want is a pair of ears. Guys hate it when you give us a problem and then don't let us do something about it. It makes us feel bad. And then the only way to make ourselves feel better is to rip a phone book in two or blow something up. So let's get this straight - I'm not a good listener. I'm a guy."
"Yes you are." I stood and smiled. "Want to buy me a drink at an after work bar?"
"Now you're talking," my brother said, and we left the office. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The joke in our family is that we can cry reading the phone book. ~ Ron Reagan

The most enjoyable book in the world is the phone book, because think of all the sex that went into creating the content. ~ Jarod Kintz

Beautiful songs could sometimes take a person out of themselves and carry them away to a place of magic. But when Jill sang, it was not about the song, really. She could sing the phone book. She could sing a shopping list. Whatever she sang, whatever the words or the tune, it was so beautiful, so achingly lovely, that no one could listen and be untouched. ~ Michael Grant

We all received invitations, made by hand from construction paper, with balloons containing our names in Magic Marker. Our amazement at being formally invited to a house we had only visited in our bathroom fantasies was so great that we had to compare one another's invitations before we believed it. It was thrilling to know that the Lisbon girls knew our names, that their delicate vocal cords had pronounced their syllables, and that they meant something in their lives. They had had to labor over proper spellings and to check our addresses in the phone book or by the metal numbers nailed to the trees. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

The interview process tests not what the applicant knows, but how well they can process tricky questions: If you wanted to figure out how many times on average you would have to flip the pages of the Manhattan phone book to find a specific name, how would you approach the problem? If a spider fell to the bottom of a 50-foot well, and each day climbed up 3 feet and slipped back 2, how many days would it take the spider to get out of the well? . ~ Bill Gates

We didn't have Facebook in my day, we had a phone book but you wouldn't waste an afternoon on it ~ Betty White

If you go to Germany and get drunk, at some point you will try to look up Hitler in the phone book. ~ Dave Attell

But not so odd a name, after all, if you've ever read through the phone directory, with its Hyman Diddlebockers and Sasparilla Greenleafs. I read through the phone book once, never mind when, and it satisfied a deep need in me to realize how many people aren't called Smith. ~ Sylvia Plath

He smiled. "Yeah. Reckon you could read the phone book and make it dirty. ~ Alexis Hall

The phone book shouldn't be arranged alphabetically, but by height. Guess how tall my love for you is. That's right - taller than Goliath! ~ Jarod Kintz

When people come to the only professional wizard in the Chicago phone book for help, they're one of two things: desperate or smart. Very rarely are they both. ~ Jim Butcher

[U]se extreme caution, and please remember that 451 degrees Fahrenheit is more than just a book a title.... ~ Ammon Shea

The dead live on in the homeliest of ways. They're listed in the phone book. They get mail. Their wigs rest on Styrofoam heads at the back of closets. Their beds are made. Their shoes are everywhere. ~ Elizabeth McCracken

You know what's fun? You pick somebody at random, like out of the phone book, and send them about 100 'Just Because' cards. They can't even ask you why you did it. ~ Brian Regan

I've heard of a guy in Chicago who advertises in the phone book under "Wizard",though that's probably a urban legend. ~ Benedict Jacka

I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

She could read the phone book and make it sound erotic. ~ Kresley Cole

I'm assuming you didn't just call me to come out of the closet to a blind woman'

'Oh, it's something I do everyday,' Kate said, enjoying Faith's sense of humor. 'I open up a phone book, randomly select a name, dial it, and when they answer, I proclaim I'm a lesbian and then hang up. ~ Laurie Salzler

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 was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was.

But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out ~ Emily Giffin

Now that I think about it, I was arrested in 1992. Some people may think of that as a bad thing, but I feel good about it. I chained myself to the gate of a phone book factory, a GTE factory in Los Angeles. They were using thousand-year-old trees to make phone books. I think that's a total waste of a tree. ~ Winona LaDuke

I don't expect Christians to see God as a metaphor, but that's what he is. Perhaps it might be clearer to call him a character in fiction, and a very interesting one too: one of the greatest and most complex villains of all - savage, petty, boastful and jealous, and yet capable of moments of tenderness and extremes of arbitrary affection - for David, for example. But he's not real, any more than Hamlet or Mr Pickwick are real. They are real in the context of their stories, but you won't find them in the phone book. ~ Philip Pullman

You could sing us the phone book and we would still love you. ~ Paula Abdul

...Zachary winched a few more letters onto his last name and declared himself king of the Z aficionados. ~ Ammon Shea

I said once that if they gave me enough money to read the phone book, I'd do it. I live in a total state of non-expectation. I don't expect things, and I keep my expectations very low about everything ~ Anthony Hopkins

I love 'Breaking Bad.' I'd watch Bryan Cranston read the phone book, for days. ~ Joel Kinnaman

Those of us who do like visitors have to advertise, and it's tricky to find a way of doing it that doesn't make you sound crazy. The majority rely on word of mouth, though younger mages use the Internet. I've even heard of one guy in Chicago who advertises in the phone book under "Wizard," though that's probably an urban legend. ~ Benedict Jacka

I got a parking ticket one time in L.A. and I was furious about it. I was trying to prove a point to the guy who gave it to me and I put it in my mouth and chewed it up. And the guy just kept watching me, like, "Yeah?" He didn't think I was going to finish the job. So then I swallowed it. The good news is that paper is not a big deal if you eat it.You'd be full, but you could eat the phone book. So that was the weirdest thing: a parking ticket. ~ Rob Huebel

My dad is still the only Mraz in the Mechanicsville phone book, so he's getting calls from girls to see if I'm home! ~ Jason Mraz

You're not a human till you're in my phone book. There. My hat is now in the political ring. ~ Bill Hicks

Hang it all, Haven, talk to a girlfriend if all you want is a pair of ears. Guys hate it when you give us a problem and then don't let us do something about it. It makes us feel bad. And then the only way to make ourselves feel better is to rip a phone book in two or blow something up. So let's get this straight - I'm not a good listener. I'm a guy. - Jack Travis ~ Lisa Kleypas

As an old reporter, we have a few secrets, and the first thing is we try the phone book. ~ Andy Rooney

Digital organisms, while not necessarily any more alive than a phone book, are strings of code that replicate and evolve over time. Digital codes are strings of binary digits - bits. ~ George Dyson

I actually kind of like Janet Reno. She seems like a nice enough lady. But when you're basically going through the entire phone book trying to find women lawyers who don't have maids to pick the attorney general of the United States, how well can you do? ~ Dave Barry

One time, in New Orleans at a youth convention for my church, I read out of the phone book during a talent show. I made it all the way to 'J' before people started booing. ~ Travis J. Dahnke

He was afflicted with an education and a sense of humor. He was inspired by a purpose. He was armed with a phone book. He was doomed. ~ Alfred Bester

By the way, Reb, about the singing. What gives? Walt Whitman sang the body electric. Billie Holiday sang the blues. You sang ... everything. You could sing the phone book. I would call and say how are you feeling, and you'd answer, The old gray rabbi, ain't what he used to be ... ~ Mitch Albom

Finally Jobs proposed Apple Computer. "I was on one of my fruitarian diets," he explained. "I had just come back from the apple farm. It sounded fun, spirited, and not intimidating. Apple took the edge off the word 'computer.' Plus, it would get us ahead of Atari in the phone book ~ Steve Jobs

Lois Magic was not listed in the phone book. ~ Raymond Chandler

Go through your phone book, call people and ask them to drive you to the airport. The ones who will drive you are your true friends. The rest aren't bad people; they're just acquaintances. ~ Jay Leno

Whenever I see interesting names, I jot them down. I've found them in lots of different places: on the news, in the phone book, even on hotel registry lists. ~ Cassandra Clare

Paul Bearer has more chins than a Chinese phone book! ~ Jerry Lawler

If David Bowie wants, I'll put him in my phone book. ~ Mads Mikkelsen

These are my wakeup cupcakes, some anti-depressants, and a cell phone book ~ Courtney Love

Once, in Lisbon, I tried my best to work the phone book in a way that would assuage a longing [Alice and I] had for certain Chinese dishes ... ~ Calvin Trillin

I have a very big phone book and a very long reach around the world. And I think - I don't think, I know - that 95 percent of the people who I know who weren't born into success who have become successful and done things that are different and made a lot of money and had a lot of excitement in their life are people who never hear the word 'no.' ~ Jerry Weintraub

People say that I could sing the phone book and make it sound good. ~ Edith Piaf

I travel for the jolting, angelic act of seeking strangeness and newness and profoundness. ~ Carew Papritz

What I would like to write is a book about nothing, a book without exterior attachments, which would be held together by the innerforce of its style, as the earth without support is held in the air
a book that would have almost no subject or at least in which the subject would be almost invisible. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Like any overt school of mysticism, a movement seeking to achieve a vicious goal has to invoke the higher mysteries of an incomprehensible authority. An unread and unreadable book serves this purpose. It does not count on men's intelligence, but on their weaknesses, pretensions and fears. It is not a tool of enlightenment, but of intellectual intimidation. It is not aimed at the reader's understanding, but at his inferiority complex.
An intelligent man will reject such a book with contemptuous indignation, refusing to waste his time on untangling what he perceives to be gibberish - which is part of the book's technique: the man able to refute its arguments will not (unless he has the endurance of an elephant and the patience of a martyr). A young man of average intelligence - particularly a student of philosophy or of political science - under a barrage of authoritative pronouncements acclaiming the book as "scholarly," "significant," "profound," will take the blame for his failure to understand. More often than not, he will assume that the book's theory has been scientifically proved and that he alone is unable to grasp it; anxious, above all, to hide his inability, he will profess agreement, and the less his understanding, the louder his agreement - while the rest of the class are going through the same mental process. Most of them will accept the book's doctrine, reluctantly and uneasily, and lose their intellectual integrity, condemning themselves to a chronic fog of ~ Ayn Rand

A perverse nature can be stimulated by anything. Any book can be used as a pornographic instrument, even a great work of literature if the mind that so uses it is off-balance. I once found a small boy masturbating in the presence of the Victorian steel-engraving in a family Bible. ~ Anthony Burgess

He stopped what he was doing and pulled out his magic phone.
Okay, the phone wasn't magic, but it does things my computer struggles with. ~ Patricia Briggs

Wait," said Ragnor, and he started to snigger. "Is this about your Nephilim boyfriend?"
"Our relationship is as yet undefined," said Magnus with dignity. Then he clutched the phone and hissed, "And how do you know private details about my personal life with Alexander?"
"Ooooh, Alexander," Ragnor said in a singsong voice. "I know all about it. Raphael called and told me."
"Raphael Santiago," said Magnus, thinking darkly of the current leader of the New York vampire clan, "has a black ungrateful heart, and one day he will be punished for this treachery. ~ Cassandra Clare

And now, let us go out on the terrace where 'droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,' while the evening star 'washes the dusk with silver.' At twilight nature becomes a wonderfully suggestive effect, and is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets. ~ Oscar Wilde

Happiness and achieving our dreams is a matter of believing it is possible and having a positive frame of mind. ~ Rob Martin

The author of the book, one Agnes Nutter, was not surprised by this, but then, it would have taken an awful lot to surprise Agnes Nutter.

Anyway, she had not written it for the sales, or the royalties, or even for the fame. She had written it for the single gratis copy of the book that an author was entitled to. ~ Terry Pratchett

The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in. ~ Dick Wolf

I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all books were burnt; I am lean with seeing others eat - O that there would come a famine through all the world, that all might die, and I live alone; then thou should'st see how fat I would be! But must thou sit and I stand? Come down, with a vengeance! ~ Christopher Marlowe

Indignation caused Mercedes to puff out her cheeks temporarily, causing her narrow face to resemble a set of inflated fireplace bellows. "You don't like Mr. Swift any more than I do," she retorted.
"No," Lillian said frankly. "But much as I hate to admit it, that puts us in a minority. Swift is liked by everyone in the northern hemisphere, including Westcliff and his friends, my friends, the servants, the neighbors - "
"You are exaggerating - "
" - children, animals and the higher order of plants," Lillian finished sardonically. "If root vegetables could talk, I've no doubt they would say they like him, too."
Daisy, who was sitting by the window with a book, looked up with a sudden grin. "His charm doesn't extend to poultry," she said. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I read the last paragraph of my favorite book. I remind myself that some things I love end. And that's okay.

Ari Eastman ~ Ari Eastman

I often lose myself in the Sudoku-like challenges of making a book work. ~ David Mitchell

Reading Ellen's hilarious new book. Thirsty for tequila. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

I wrote my first sucio story, as I call them, in 1997. This was always my 'cheater's book,' my book about sucios desgraciados. My plan was to write a book about how people deal with love and loss. ~ Junot Diaz

The first time I drew a Superman story was 'For Tomorrow' with Brian Azzarello in 2004. It didn't really hit me how important it was until I drew a scene early-on in the book that featured Superman crossing paths with a giant, intergalactic space armada. ~ Jim Lee

I love Toni Morrison and Jeanette Winterson. 'The Passion' is my favourite book. ~ Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Peeling an Orange

Between you and a bowl of oranges I lie nude
Reading The World's Illusion through my tears.
You reach across me hungry for global fruit,
Your bare arm hard, furry and warm on my belly.
Your fingers pry the skin of a naval orange
Releasing tiny explosions of spicy oil.
You place peeled disks of gold in a bizarre pattern
On my white body. Rearranging, you bend and bite
The disks to release further their eager scent.
I say "Stop, you're tickling," my eyes still on the page.
Aromas of groves arise. Through green leaves
Glow the lofty snows. Through red lips
Your white teeth close on a translucent segment.
Your face over my face eclipses The World's Illusion.
Pulp and juice pass into my mouth from your mouth.
We laugh against each other's lips. I hold my book
Behind your head, still reading, still weeping a little.
You say "Read on, I'm just an illusion," rolling
Over upon me soothingly, gently unmoving,
Smiling greenly through long lashes. And soon
I say "Don't stop. Don't disillusion me."
Snows melt. The mountain silvers into many a stream.
The oranges are golden worlds in a dark dream. ~ Virginia Adair

For my whole career in retail, I have stuck by one guiding principle. It's a simple one, and I have repeated it over and over and over in this book until I'm sure you're sick to death of it. But I'm going to say it again anyway: the secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want. ~ Sam Walton

A big book is a hard thing to manage - I find the computer makes it easier to keep it in order, and to keep the old drafts (which I sometimes go back to) without drowning in paper. ~ Kate Grenville

If a book is really good, it deserves to be read again, and if it's great, it should be read at least three times. ~ Anatole Broyard

Sometimes we hear it said that ten minutes on your knees will give you a truer, deeper, more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over your books. What! Than ten hours over your books on your knees? ~ B. B. Warfield

I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration. A book, especially a longer book, it's a different kind of force that pushes you through it. It's a vision of the whole thing. ~ Alan Lightman

People say if you're doing an art project, that's different from a book, but I honestly don't see it. I try and try, and I just don't. ~ Douglas Coupland

Oh, loneliness and cheeseburgers are a dangerous mix. ~ Matt Groening

My first book was signed up when I was 13, and I've been writing ever since. But penning the 'Halo' series has been so much more rewarding than I ever expected. For three years, from the age of 16 to 19, I poured my life, my experiences, and a love for the supernatural that dates back to childhood into these books. ~ Alexandra Adornetto

People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to. ~ John Green

When men have no vices, she thought, it's very difficult to guess what might make them happy. ~ Michel Houellebecq

Neither words can bring you back... I know now,as I have tried
Not the tears... I know now, as I have cried ~ Kiran Joshi

Sitting on the train I watch the scenery speeding by, notice a cobweb in the top corner of the window, undulating with a gentle breeze I can't feel. I lean back in my seat and take my book out of the carrier bag. Turning it over in my hand, it feels warm. It feels how I want to feel; full of knowledge, full of the future.
The time I've spent staying in bed smoking dope I've been hibernating, recuperating and gaining strength. I'm weak socially, but being away from other drug users has made me resilient. It's allowed my mind and body to heal and mend. As if the winter is over, I've come out stronger now. I'm on my own. I have the choice of what to do with my life.
I'm going to stay clean. I'm going to be the woman I can be. ~ Christine Lewry

I want to forget everything you told me. I want to wash away how uncertain you made me. How scared I was of losing you. How I lost you anyway. I don't want to know how your hands feel or what makes you smile. I don't want to see you in photos, familiar like a dream I had once or a book I never finished. ~ Gaby Dunn

At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven. If so, I was going to reply, You know what? You're right. Fine. ~ Lance Armstrong

In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.
All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try.
And no one can help me. Not even you. ~ Ray Bradbury

As I turned into my driveway, it occurred to me that I would have loved to curl up with a good man instead of a good book tonight. But that ship had sailed for me. Literally. ~ Suzanne M. Trauth

In my head, the 5 issues of A Spoon Too Short comprise one novel: a 100 page graphic novel sequel to Douglas' two Dirk books, taking some of the ideas he was working on before he died, and a whole bunch of new stuff from me and a little from Max Landis (who is the Executive Producer on the book as well as writing the forthcoming TV series). ~ Arvind Ethan David

The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book. ~ Dan Brown

Boughs are daily rifled By the gusty thieves, And the book of Nature Getteth short of leaves. ~ Thomas Hood

Diamond, however, had not been out so late before in all his life, and things looked so strange about him! - just as if he had got into Fairyland, of which he knew quite as much as anybody;
for his mother had no money to buy books to set him wrong on the subject. ~ George MacDonald

It would be better to close the book, close the books, and to face, all at once, not life, which is very big, but the fragile armor of the present. ~ Alejandro Zambra

The following story is true. There was a little boy, and his father said, "Do try to be like other people. Don't frown." And he tried and tried, but could not. So his father beat him with a strap; and then he was eaten up by lions.

Reader, if young, take warning by his sad life and death. For though it may be an honour to be different from other people, if Carlyle's dictum about the 30 million be still true, yet other people do not like it.

So, if you are different, you had better hide it, and pretend to be solemn and wooden-headed. Until you make your fortune. For most wooden-headed people worship money; and, really, I do not see what else they can do. In particular, if you are going to write a book, remember the wooden-headed. So be rigorous; that will cover a multitude of sins. And do not frown. ~ Oliver Heaviside

For children: I'm writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I'm writing poems. ~ Kate DiCamillo

The difference between the world of pictures and the world of printed matter is extraordinary and hard to define. A picture is like the masses: a multitude of impressions. A book on the other hand, with its linear advance of words and characters seems to be connected to individual identity. ~ Don DeLillo

One day," she said, "I'll catch dreams like butterflies."
"And then what?" he asked.
"Then I'll put them between the pages of big, fat books and press them until they're words."
"Suppose there's someone who never dreams of anything but you?"
"Maybe then we're both words in a book. Two names among all the others. ~ Kai Meyer

One bright day in the last week of February, I was walking in the park, enjoying the threefold luxury of solitude, a book, and pleasant weather. ~ Anne Bronte

We do not so much want books for good people, as books which will make bad ones better. ~ Hannah More