Telephone Quotes

The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees, ~ Michael Scanlon

I wonder why he hastened to tell us that George Hearne was buried in the churchyard, and then added that naturally he was!'

'It's the natural place to be buried in,' said I.

'Quite. That's just why it was hardly worth mentioning.'

I felt then, just momentarily, just vaguely, as if my mind was regarding stray pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. The fancied ringing of the telephone bell last night was one of them, this burial of George Hearne in the churchyard was another, and, even more inexplicably, the ladder I had seen under the trees was a third. Consciously I made nothing whatever out of them, and did not feel the least inclination to devote any ingenuity to so fortuitous a collection of pieces. Why shouldn't I add, for that matter, our morning's bathe, or the gorse on the hillside? But I had the sensation that, though my conscious brain was presently occupied with piquet, and was rapidly growing sleepy with the day of sun and sea, some sort of mole inside it was digging passages and connecting corridors below the soil. ("Expiation") ~ E.F. Benson

We walked out of there, and for the first time I felt the mood of a night without feeling that an author was ramming it down my throat for story purposes. I looked at the clean-swept, star-reaching cubism of the Radio City area and its living snakes of neon, and I suddenly thought of an Evelyn Smith story the general idea of which was "After they found out the atom bomb was magic, the rest of the magicians who enchanted refrigerators and washing machines and the telephone system came out into the open." I felt a breath of wind and wondered what it was that had breathed. I heard the snoring of the city and for an awesome second felt it would roll over, open its eyes, and ... speak. ~ Theodore Sturgeon

Unlike the hot line frequently depicted in Hollywood films, the new system didn't provide a special telephone for the president to use in an emergency. It relied on Teletype machines that could send text quickly and securely. Written statements were considered easier to translate, more deliberate, and less subject to misinterpretation than verbal ones. Every ~ Eric Schlosser

Chase, we don't believe that homosexuality is a sin. The Bible was inspired by God, but it was written, translated, and interpreted by imperfect people just like us. This means that the passing of this sacred scripture from generation to generation and from culture to culture has been a bit like the "telephone game" you play at school. After thousands of years, it's impossible to judge the original spirit of some scripture. We believe that when in doubt, mercy triumphs judgment. So your parents are Christians who study and pray and then carefully choose what we follow in the Bible, based on whether or not it matches our understanding of Jesus's overall message. ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

The Quito telephone service is about as reliable as roulette. ~ Christopher Isherwood

Hannah sat down again and leant back against the tall head of the hall chair. He was right. Yes, he was right. She must have been mad to go on like she had. Good Lord! She hadn't given him the message from Mrs Beggs. Again she was on her feet, but her voice still sounded angry as she called down the hall, 'I forgot to give you a message, from Mrs Beggs. She wanted to know if you were going there tomorrow or Saturday.' There was a moment's silence before his door opened and he came back into the hall and went to the telephone. She remained standing where she was until she heard him say, 'Hello, Beggie. ~ Catherine Cookson

I am the man who comes and goes between the bar and the telephone booth. Or, rather:that man is called 'I' and you know nothing else about him, just as this station is called only 'station' and beyond it there exists nothing except the unanswered signal of a telephone ringing in a dark room of a distant city. ~ Italo Calvino

Dying's not so bad. At least I won't have to answer the telephone. ~ Rita Mae Brown

You mentioned a telephone conversation that you had with him, your last conversation. While you were in Kirkjubaejarklaustur. He called you there. ~ Anonymous

Bell seated himself behind the desk, motioning for Nancy to stand opposite him. There was tense silence for a moment. Then Bell reached for a desk telephone.
"I am going to call the police, Miss Drew, and turn you over to them on a charge of trespassing, breaking, and entering with an attempt to steal."
"I wish you would," Nancy replied. "if it is possible over that dummy telephone. ~ Carolyn Keene

From the perspective of the world's national security apparatuses you exist in several locations. You appear on property and income-tax registries, on passport and ID card databases. You show up on passenger manifests and telephone logs . . . You are fingertip swirls, facial ratios, dental records, voice patterns, spending trails, e-mail threads. ~ Mohsin Hamid

I can't remember my telephone number, but I know it was in the high numbers. ~ John Maynard Keynes

Leave home. Fail marvelously, and succeed even better. Kick your feet up and wonder when you will be back. Stay out late. Make telephone calls from unfamiliar street corners. When your mother's voice comes from far away and asks where you are, squint down the road and tell her you aren't sure. Make uncertainty your home. Put the mat out for yourself. Look at your watch and think of how you're almost home. ~ Nick Burd

Once more Jane sat staring at the telephone. This time she was filled with a confidence that was new to her. Stan Crandall. Stanley Crandall. He liked her! He had seen her once, and even though had been rumpled and grass-stained and having a terrible time with Sandra, he liked her well enough to go to the trouble of finding out her name and calling to ask her to go to the movies. Jane smiled at the telephone and gave a sigh of happiness ~ Beverly Cleary

She began to think of all the people in Belfast who were drinking or drugging themselves into bearable insensibility that night. People would be hitting other people in the face with broken bottles. People were avowing and making love to people for whom they truly cared nothing; other people were screaming hatred at those whom they really did love. People were destroying things, daubing walls with paint and breaking up telephone boxes; joy-riding stolen cars into stone walls. In hospitals and homes, people were watching others dying, hoping and praying that the inevitable would not happen, while other people were planning murder. People elsewhere were trying to commit suicide, fumbling with change for the gas meter or emptying brown plastic bottles of their pills and tablets, which were bitter and dry in the mouth.

And there are, she thought, there must be, people who think as I do. ~ Deirdre Madden

One of the sicknesses of the twentieth century? I'll tell you the worst one. People can't stand to be alone. Can't tolerate it! So they go to the movies, get drive-in hamburgers, put their home telephone numbers in the crapsheets and say 'Please call me up!' It's sick. People hate their own company --- they cry when they see themselves in mirrors. It scares them, the way their faces look. Maybe that's a clue to the whole thing... ~ Paul Theroux

If we generally like the way things are now, we must also ask whether our current situation is really so different from the open ages of radio, film, or the telephone. Might it not also have seemed in those times that the orgy of limitless entrepreneurism would never end? The point is that we are near the high end of a pendulum arc that, so far, has aways begun to swing in the opposite direction -toward greater integration and centralization- with a force that can seem inexorable. ~ Tim Wu

We're a telephone family, strung out along the wires, sharing our news in loops and daisy chains. We don't meet face-to-face much, and when we do there's a dematerialized feeling, as though only half of our molecules are present. ~ Walter Kirn

Another way fathers impact sons is that sons, once their voices have changed in puberty, invariably answer the telephone with the same locutions and intonations as their fathers. This holds true regardless of whether the fathers are still alive. ~ David Foster Wallace

and so I opened my eyes and I opened my mind and I saw something I never would have noticed on a bicycle unless I was going very, very fast down a very long hill. Because of the speed of the bus and how I was exerting no effort, the telephone wires on the side of the road, sagging between poles, went up and down with the same rhythm as my heartbeat. ~ Antoine Wilson

Well, there were, of course, people to call. A good fifty names in my telephone book, which I had acquired only a month ago. But there was no one I wanted to talk to, much less see. Maybe I was just depressed. In that case, long live depression! That hypothetical malady made it very easy for me to take the most important decision in my life. ~ Max Frei

We do spend too much time on the telephone, and you know something? We love it. ~ Michio Kaku

All alone by the telephone. ~ Irving Berlin

Computer hacking really results in financial losses and hassles. The objectives of terrorist groups are more serious. That is not to say that cyber groups can't access a telephone switch in Manhattan on a day like 9/11, shut it down, and therefore cause more casualties. ~ Kevin Mitnick

Shortly after I began work with Teresa, I acquired another MPD client, a supposedly schizophrenic young man I will call Tony. He called in to the clinic on a day I was on telephone duty, saying he was having flashbacks of "ritual abuse." I did not yet know what that was. Tony became my client. He could be quite entertaining. I have a vivid memory of him as a three-year-old, "Tiny Tony," standing on his head on my office couch, and running down the hall to try unsuccessfully to make it to the bathroom. He had in his head the entire rock band of Guns'n'Roses, and I got to know Axl, the band leader, quite well. I remember the time Tony was in hospital and I went to visit him; Axl popped out and said, "Remember, we're schizophrenic in here! ~ Alison Miller

Whether the challenge is getting a raise or a promotion, doing our job in a certain way, pushing an elected official to vote for a bill we favor, planning a vacation with a spouse, or getting a child to eat right, we are always, consciously or not, gauging our power: assessing our capacity to get others to behave as we want. We bridle at the power of others and its irritating and inconveniencing effects: how our boss, the government, the police, the bank, or our telephone or cable provider induces us to behave in a certain way, to do certain things, or to quit doing others. And yet we often seek power, sometimes in very self-conscious ways. ~ Moises Naim

When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That's not what this program is about ... What the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers, and durations of calls; they are not looking at people's names and they're not looking at content ... If the intelligence committee actually wants to listen to a phone call they have to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation. ~ Barack Obama

I kissed this girl
but her tongue didn't move right
and then she went home.

Before
I got her number and I saved it on my telephone
but I did it in the wrong alphabet.
so I wrote down all of the possible
permutations in order to decode
her name so that I would know it
if we ever kissed again. ~ Keith Birthday

The difference between utility and utility plus beauty is the difference between telephone wires and the spider web. ~ Edwin Way Teale

Dorothy wants to talk to you. Don't ask her to eat with us."
When Nora returned from the telephone she had a look in her eye. "Now what's up?" I asked.
"Nothing. Just 'how are you' and all that."
I said: "if you're lying to the old man, God'll punish you. ~ Dashiell Hammett

There are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon. Proud gods, fat and foolish creatures, puffed up with their own newness and importance. "They are aware of us, they fear us, and they hate us," said Odin. "You are fooling yourselves if you believe otherwise. ~ Neil Gaiman

A strange thing happened to me as I walked away from Jane's house
I was finally thinking clearly. I could see what Charlotte meant. Jane knew how to fix people. Now that I'd talked through some of my issues, I'd blown out the dust and garbage out of my brain and I could think for once. I could smell the rain, heavy with iron. The cold woke me, but it didn't sting. My breath puffed out in front of me in a great white plume, and I laughed. It was like I was breathing ghosts. I wasn't in the land of long highways and big box stores and humid, endless summers. I was in London, a city of stone and rain and magic. I understood, for instance, why they liked red so much. The red buses, telephone booths, and postboxes were a violent shock against the grays of the sky and stone. Red was blood and beating hearts.
And I was strong. ~ Maureen Johnson

The telephone is your theater, your stage. Your receiver is your curtain. When it goes up, make yourself a star. ~ Nancy J. Friedman

Speaking of novels,' I said, 'you remember we decided once, you, your husband and I, that Proust's rough masterpiece was a huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream, totally unconnected with any possible people in any historical France, a sexual travestissement and a colossal farce, the vocabulary of genius and its poetry, but no more, impossibly rude hostesses, please let me speak, and even ruder guests, mechanical Dostoevskian rows and Tolstoian nuances of snobbishness repeated and expanded to an unsufferable length, adorable seascapes, melting avenues, no, do not interrupt me, light and shade effects rivaling those of the greatest English poets, a flora of metaphors, described - by Cocteau, I think - as "a mirage of suspended gardens," and, I have not yet finished, an absurd, rubber-and-wire romance between a blond young blackguard (the fictitious Marcel), and an improbable jeune fille who has a pasted-on bosom, Vronski's (and Lyovin's) thick neck, and a cupid's buttocks for cheeks; but - and now let me finish sweetly - we were wrong, Sybil, we were wrong in denying our little beau ténébreux the capacity of evoking "human interest": it is there, it is there - maybe a rather eighteenth-centuryish, or even seventeenth-centuryish, brand, but it is there. Please, dip or redip, spider, into this book [offering it], you will find a pretty marker in it bought in France, I want John to keep it. Au revoir, Sybil, I must go now. I think my telephone is ringing. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

My telephone manners were, well, offensive to some. As I lugged my cell around, yammering away, I noticed cold stares from passersby who viewed me as a kind of techno-terrorist, or at least incredibly rude. ~ Kara Swisher

E-mail is far more convenient than the telephone, as far as I'm concerned. I would throw my phone away if I could get away with it. ~ Tom Hanks

We feel prepared to face the reality of restoration. We walk into town for coffee and telephone Piero Rizzatti, the geometra. The translations "draftsman" or "surveyor" don't quite explain what a geometra is, a professional without an equivalent in the United States - a liaison among owner, builders, and town planning officials. Ian has assured us that he is the best in the area, meaning also that he has the best connections and can get the permits quickly. ~ Frances Mayes

A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses ... : this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wiresto the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ. ~ Jean Baudrillard

And it's okay if you have to go away Oh just remember the telephone works both ways And if I never ever hear them ring If nothing else I'll think the bells inside Have finally found you someone else and that's okay Cause I'll remember everything you sang ((You and I both)) ~ Jason Mraz

My words travelled through my veins which hung in the sky like telephone wires. ~ Annabel Pitcher

He was a telephone man who fell in love with long distance. ~ Tennessee Williams

A nerd is someone who uses a telephone to talk to other people about telephones. ~ Douglas Adams

And yet, for all this, for all that he was unparalleled in depicting tyrants knee-deep in blood, Shakespeare was a little naive. Because his monsters had doubts, bad dreams, pangs of conscience, guilt. They saw the spirits of those they had killed rising in front of them. But in real life, under real terror, what guilty conscience? What bad dreams? That was all sentimentality, false optimism, a hope that the world would be as we wanted it to be, rather than as it was. Those who chopped the wood and made the chips fly, those who smoked Belomory behind their desks at the Big House, those who signed the orders and made the telephone calls, closing a dossier and with it a life: how few of them had bad dreams, or ever saw the spirits of the dead rising to reproach them." (p 94) ~ Julian Barnes

This was during the final month of the era when it was possible to press a series of buttons on a telephone and speak with someone on the far side of the earth. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

I felt condemned to obscurity and to celibacy. But when one is driven by passion, one can live on almost nothing, and I was driven by passion for writing. One does not starve in modern, Western societies, and one can do without such amenities as the telephone, a car, entertainment. ~ Alain Robbe-Grillet

Banks felt more alone and further away for having just talked to Sophia than he had before her call. But it was always like that - the telephone might bring you together for a few moments, but there's nothing like it for emphasising distance. ~ Peter Robinson

What about the hero of The House on the Strand? What did it mean when he dropped the telephone at the end of the book? I don't really know, but I rather think he was going to be paralysed for life. Don't you? ~ Daphne Du Maurier

Only then, after all these things had been accomplished within the first couple of hours of the coup, could the messages, which had been drawn up and filed, be sent out by radio, telephone and telegraph to the commanders of the Home Army in other cities and to the top generals commanding the troops at the front and in the occupied zones, announcing that Hitler was dead and that a new anti-Nazi government had been formed in Berlin. The revolt would have to be over - and achieved - within twenty-four hours and the new government firmly installed. Otherwise the vacillating generals might have second thoughts. Goering and Himmler might be able to rally them, and a civil war would ensue. In that case the fronts would cave in and the very chaos and collapse which the plotters wished to prevent would become inevitable. ~ William L. Shirer

Of 76,000 buildings in Hiroshima 70,000 were damaged or destroyed, 48,000 totally. "It is no exaggeration to say," reports the Japanese study, "that the whole city was ruined instantaneously."2679 Material losses alone equaled the annual incomes of more than 1.1 million people. "In Hiroshima many major facilities - prefectural office, city hall, fire departments, police stations, national railroad stations, post offices, telegram and telephone offices, broadcasting station, and schools - were totally demolished or burned. Streetcars, roads, and electricity, gas, water, and sewage facilities were ruined beyond use. ~ Richard Rhodes

She's spoken with Parkaboy twice before, and both times it's been odd, in the way that initial telephone conversations with people you've gotten to know well on the Net, yet have never met, are odd. She ~ William Gibson

When these long telephone silences come, it is a sure sign that love is over. ~ Walker Percy

After I returned from that morning, our telephone rang incessantly with requests for interviews and photos. By midafternoon I was exhausted. At four o'clock I was reaching to disconnect the telephone when I answered one last call.
Thank heavens I did! I heard, "Mrs. Robertson? This is Ian Hamilton from the Lord Chamberlain's office."
I held my breath and prayed, "Please let this be the palace."
He continued: "We would like to invite you, your husband, and your son to attend the funeral of the Princess of Wales on Saturday in London." I was speechless. I could feel my heart thumping. I never thought to ask him how our name had been selected. Later, in London, I learned that the Spencer family had given instructions to review Diana's personal records, including her Christmas-card list, with the help of her closest aides.
"Yes, of course, we absolutely want to attend," I answered without hesitating. "Thank you so much. I can't tell you how much this means to me. I'll have to make travel plans on very short notice, so may I call you back to confirm? How late can I reach you?"
He replied, "Anytime. We're working twenty-four hours a day. But I need your reply within an hour." I jotted down his telephone and fax numbers and set about making travel arrangements.
My husband had just walked in the door, so we were able to discuss who would travel and how. Both children's passports had expired and could not be renewed in less than a day from the suburbs wh ~ Mary Robertson

In terms of the stars, the only ones I cast were Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins. I was in Los Angeles working and a lot of this took place on the telephone. I'd met Maggie [Smith] once and I'd come back-stage, which I'm usually loathe to do because as an actor you don't want people coming back because you want to get home [laughs]. ~ Dustin Hoffman

Nowadays, if a man living in a civilized country (ha!) hears cannon blasts in his sleep, he will, of course, mistake them for thunderclaps, gun salutes on the feast day of the local patron saint, or furniture being moved by the slime-buckets living upstairs, and go right on sleeping soundly. But the ringing of the telephone, the triumphal march of the cell phone, or the doorbell, no: Those are all sounds of summons in response to which the civilzed man (ha-ha!) has no choice but to surface from the depths of slumber and answer. ~ Andrea Camilleri

I was the deputy Chairman of the Democratic Union of the Pacific, and we started at 8 I think and I was called to the telephone and to be told there's a coup, the government has been overthrown - it was round about 9, 10 when the Parliament sat they had done then. ~ Kamisese Mara

What good was a love affair that ended with the last train to the country, and Christmas presents that had to be given the day before Christmas because holidays were family times, and knowing that you would still be as alone as before because you could never telephone the man you loved when you needed him? ~ Rona Jaffe

A lot of people are very happy to read their newspaper either on their iPad or - startlingly and faster and faster the figures go up - on their telephone, on their smart phone. ~ Rupert Murdoch

In general, anyone who paid the long distance telephone tax will get the refund on their 2006 federal income tax return. This includes individuals, businesses and non-profit organizations. ~ Virgil Goode

I won't telephone him. I'll never telephone him again as long as I live. He'll rot in hell, before I'll call him up. You don't have to give me strength, God; I have it myself. If he wanted me, he could get me. He knows where I am. He knows I'm waiting here. He's so sure of me, so sure. I wonder why they hate you, as soon as they are sure of you. ~ Dorothy Parker

Only you would ask. All anyone has to do is look in your eyes to see your heart shining through, and it's a warm heart, to boot. I think Hattie has made the perfect choice
Chloe felt as if she'd just gotten a telephone hug. ~ Catherine Anderson

The time of dangling insects arrived. White houses with caterpillars dangling from the eaves. White stones in driveways. You can walk at night down the middle of the street and hear women talking on the telephone. Warmer weather produces voices in the dark. They are talking about their adolescent sons. How big, how fast. The sons are almost frightening. The quantities they eat. The way they loom in doorways. These are the days that are full of wormy bugs. They are in the grass, stuck to the siding, hanging in the hair, hanging from the trees and eaves, stuck to the window screens. The women talk long-distance to grandparents of growing boys. They share the Trimline phone, beamish old folks in hand-knit sweaters on fixed incomes.
What happens to them when the commercial ends? ~ Don DeLillo

On his bedside table, between the reading lamp and the telephone, was his battered copy of David Copperfield. Homer didn't have to open the book to know how the story began. "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show," he recited from memory. ~ John Irving

I had made up my mind to find that for which I was searching even if it required the remainder of my life. After innumerable failures I finally uncovered the principle for which I was searching, and I was astounded at its simplicity. I was still more astounded to discover the principle I had revealed not only beneficial in the construction of a mechanical hearing aid but it served as well as means of sending the sound of the voice over a wire. Another discovery which came out of my investigation was the fact that when a man gives his order to produce a definite result and stands by that order it seems to have the effect of giving him what might be termed a second sight which enables him to see right through ordinary problems. What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare 'automeals,' heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be 'ordered' the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning.
Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica.
[M]en will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better. By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.
Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.
The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes.
"[H]ighways … in the more advanced sections of the world will have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but ev ~ Isaac Asimov

I'd rather sit down and write a letter than call someone up. I hate the telephone. ~ Henry Miller

I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

It win be a device that will permit communication without any time interval between two points in space. The device will not transmit messages, of course; simultaneity is identity. But to our perceptions, that simultaneity will function as a transmission, a sending. So we will be able to use it to talk between worlds, without the long waiting for the message to go and the reply to return that electromagnetic impulses require. It is really a very simple matter. Like a kind of telephone. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The press and politicians. A delicate relationship. Too close, and danger ensues. Too far apart and democracy itself cannot function without the essential exchange of information. Creative leaks, a discreet lunch, interchange in the Lobby, the art of the unattributable telephone call, late at night. ~ Howard Brenton

I had this crazy job, though, when I first got to Los Angeles ... I answered this ad in the back of the newspaper to be a telephone psychic, and I did that for two days. ~ Jenna Fischer

We must get into the picture business. This is a new industry and a gold mine. it looks like another telephone industry. ~ Joseph P. Kennedy

I often put any project I write in a different decade just to roll the thought around in my head. There's a thriller I've written that I think would be nice to set in the '70s or '80s, just to take cell phones away from the movie. There's nothing like the piercing ring of an old-school telephone to really scare an audience. ~ Joel Edgerton

What do you think of when you think of mourning?' Jenny asks.
The question snaps me back to attention. I answer without really thinking. "I guess 'Funeral Blues' by W.H. Auden. I think it was Auden. I suppose that's not very original.'
'I don't know it.'
'It's a poem.'
'I gathered.'
'I'm just clarifying. It's not a blues album.'
Jenny ignores my swipe at her intelligence.
'Does your response need to be original? Isn't that what poetry is for, for the poet to express something so personal that it ultimately is universal?'
I shrug. Who is Jenny, even new Jenny, to say what poetry is for? Who am I for that matter?
'Why do you thin of that poem in particular?'
"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, / Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.'
I learned the poem in college and it stuck. ~ Steven Rowley

At least initially, the relationship took on a nineteenth-century epistolatory quality. The only way they could stay in touch was by letter. In 1991, while South Korea was becoming the world's largest exporter of mobile telephones, few North Koreans had ever used a telephone. You had to go to a post office to make a phone call. But even writing a letter was not a simple undertaking. Writing paper was scarce. People would write in the margins of newspapers. The paper in the state stores was made of corn husk and would crumble easily if you scratched too hard. Mi-ran had to beg her mother for the money to buy a few sheets of imported paper. Rough drafts were out of the question; paper was too precious. The distance from Pyongyang to Chongjin was only 250 miles, but letters took up to a month to be delivered. ~ Barbara Demick

Bond again walked round the room. This time he carefully inspected the walls and the neighbourhood of the bed and the telephone. Why not take the room? Why would there be microphones or secret doors? What would be the point of them? ~ Ian Fleming

The behaviour of the English people I had run into was making it very difficult to nail down a theory that the reason my trip so far had been such a bizarre success, was that Irish people were crazy. One Englishman had spent a morning on the telephone trying to organise a helicopter to take me out to an island, when a boat was leaving only a few yards away, and here was another, making a two-hour round trip for no reason other than to lend a helping hand. Two of the more eccentric pieces of behaviour hadn't been performed by the Irish, but by my fellow countrymen. However, both Andy and Tony had embraced wholeheartedly a love of the Irish way of living life. ~ Tony Hawks

When Prince Charles speaks, everybody pretends to be fascinated, even though he has never said anything interesting except in that intercepted telephone conversation wherein he expressed the desire to be a feminine hygeine product. ~ Dave Barry

Fartlek, or speed play, is variable-pace running that emphasizes creativity. During a 30-minute run, choose objects to run to - telephone poles, trees, buildings, other runners, whatever. Make choices that mark off different distances, so your pickups vary in length from 15 to 90 seconds, and modify your pace to match the distance. ~ Don Kardong

America is a leap of the imagination. From its beginning, people had only a persistent idea of what a good country should be. The idea involved freedom, equality, justice, and the pursuit of happiness; nowadays most of us probably could not describe it a lot more clearly than that. The truth is, it always has been a bit of a guess. No one has ever known for sure whether a country based on such an idea is really possible, but again and again, we have leaped toward the idea and hoped. What SuAnne Big Crow demonstrated in the Lead high school gym is that making the leap is the whole point. The idea does not truly live unless it is expressed by an act; the country does not live unless we make the leap from our tribe or focus group or gated community or demographic, and land on the shaky platform of that idea of a good country which all kinds of different people share.

This leap is made in public, and it's made for free. It's not a product or a service that anyone will pay you for. You do it for reasons unexplainable by economics--for ambition, out of conviction, for the heck of it, in playfulness, for love. It's done in public spaces, face-to-face, where anyone is free to go. It's not done on television, on the Internet, or over the telephone; our electronic systems can only tell us if the leap made elsewhere has succeeded or failed. The places you'll see it are high school gyms, city sidewalks, the subway, bus stations, public parks, parking lots, and wherever people ~ Ian Frazier

[Calvin, who has the chicken pox, calls Susie on the telephone.]
Susie: Hello?
Calvin: Hi, Susie! It's me, Calvin! I was wondering if you'd like to come over and play.
Susie: Why, sure! Boy, I don't think you've ever invited me to ...
Calvin's Mom: Calvin, what are you doing?
Calvin: Nothing, Mom. Go away.
Calvin's Mom: You're contagious! You can't have anyone over to play!
Calvin: Shhhh! Shhhh! You'll spoil the whole thing! I was going to trick Susie into catching ... HEY! OW! LET GO!
Susie: [Hanging up the phone] Any chance of getting transferred, Dad? ~ Bill Watterson

The Democratic party in Louisiana just continued to move father and farther away from basic American values and farther away from the voters of Louisiana. And much farther away from me. So I just couldn't take it anymore. And recently, there was some comments made in the Senate, the comments were that if anyone opposes what we frequently call Obamacare, if anyone opposes it, they do so only because the President is an African-American, and therefore, that position is racist. My mother, who's 103 years old, called me on the telephone when she heard that. She said 'Boy, I don't want you to be involved in anything like that. I hope you disassociated yourself from that' and I was on the verge of doing it anyway, and that was just the last straw, ~ Elbert Guillory

Apart from these parental physical jerks, he did not train his body; he merely inhabited it. A friend had once shown what he called gymnastics for the intelligentsia. You took a box of matches and threw its contents on the floor, then bent down and picked them up, one by one. The first time he tried it himself, he lost patience and stuffed all the matches back in handfuls. He persevered, but the next time, just as he was bending down, the telephone went, and he was needed at once; so the housekeeper was detailed to pick up the matches instead. ~ Julian Barnes

A Student is the most important person ever in this school ... in person, on the telephone, or by mail.
A Student is not dependent on us ... we are dependent on the Student.
A Student is not an interruption of our work..the Studenti s the purpose of it. We are not doing a favor by serving the Student ... the Student is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so.
A Student is a person who brings us his or her desire to learn. It is our job to handle each Student in a manner which is beneficial to the Student and ourselves. ~ William W. Purkey

I loathe the telephone - vile, shrill-voiced intruder. i'd never answer it at all if I didn't feel I might be missing something: a million-pound offer from a film company or Robert Mitchum asking me out to lunch. I hate the element of uncertainty - you never know if it's going to be a friend or a foe on the line. I wish they'd invent a telephone which turned green like a breath-test when it was an enemy ringing, so I needn't answer it. ~ Jilly Cooper

I do have a heart, you see. I've got plenty of heart. I'm a fucking sentimental guy – once you get to know me. Show me a hurt puppy, or a long-distance telephone service commercial, or a film retrospective of Ali fights or Lou Gehrig's last speech and I'll weep real tears. I am a bastard, when crossed, though, no question. ~ Anthony Bourdain

Henry Ford has several times sneered at unproductive stockholders ... Well, now. Let's see. Who made Henry Ford's own automobile company possible? The stockholders who originally advanced money to him. Who makes it possible for you and me to be carried to and from business by train or street car? Stockholders ... Who made our vast telephone and telegraph service possible? Stockholders ... Were stockholders all over the country to withdraw their capital from the enterprises in which they are invested, there would be a panic ... on a scale never before known. ~ B.C. Forbes

While the Rumanian Radio was serializing (without my permission) How to be an Alien as an anti-British tract, the Central Office of Information rang me up here in London and asked me to allow the book to be translated into Polish for the benefit of those many Polish refugees who were then settling in this country. 'We want our friends to see us in this light,' the man said on the telephone. This was hard to bear for my militant and defiant spirit. 'But it's not such a favourable light,' I protested feebly. 'It's a very human light and that is the most favourable,' retorted the official. I was crushed.
A few weeks later my drooping spirit was revived when I heard of a suburban bank manager whose wife had brought this book home to him remarking that she had found it fairly amusing. The gentleman in question sat down in front of his open fire, put his feet up and read the book right through with a continually darkening face. When he had finished, he stood up and said:
'Downright impertinence.'
And threw the book into the fire.
He was a noble and patriotic spirit and he did me a great deal of good. I wished there had been more like him in England. But I could never find another. ~ George Mikes

Carol, I can't describe how you make me feel. Wait, no, I can - you make my mind release pleasure-inducing neurotransmitters and you've flooded my mind with dopamine. If the experience of snorting cocaine and getting so high out of my mind that I want to climb a telephone pole with my bare hands just to see if I can do it were a person, it would be you. ~ Aziz Ansari

I observed an eighteen-year-old friend of one of our daughters talking to his mother on the telephone. As he hung up the phone in frustration he said, "She makes me so angry, she's always telling me what to think and where to go and how to do things." He was obviously upset and filled with anger. I told him he had one of two choices. He could either continue to practice being right, or practice being kind. If you insist on being right you will argue, get frustrated, angry, and your problem will persist with your mom, I explained. If you simply practice being kind, you can remind yourself that this is your mom, she's always been that way, she will very likely stay that way, but you are going to send her love instead of anger when she starts in with her routine. A simple statement of kindness such as, "That's a good point, Mom, I'll think about it," and you have a spiritual solution to your problem. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

I would have used the telephone on the Shabbat even though it's forbidden, and God wouldn't have held it against me because he's probably on my side in this affair. ~ Barbara Honigmann

The richer you are, I've worked out, the smaller your telephone and the bigger your telephoto lens. ~ Geraldine McCaughrean

If synchronicity can be likened to a loved one trying to call on the telephone, then intuition is the means to answer that call. ~ Tyler Henry

No realm was too petty: The Ministry of Posts ruled that henceforth when trying to spell a word over the telephone a caller could no longer say "D as in David," because "David" was a Jewish name. The caller had to use "Dora." "Samuel" became "Siegfried." And so forth. "There has been nothing in social history more implacable, more heartless and more devastating than the present policy in Germany against the Jews," Consul General Messersmith told Undersecretary Phillips in a long letter dated September 29, 1933. He wrote, "It is definitely the aim of the Government, no matter what it may say to the outside or in Germany, to eliminate the Jews from German life. ~ Erik Larson

No radio, no telephone," Melinda observed. "No mod cons whatsoever in Hloubetin, are there."
"We have a hamster," Jacob said.
"Not traditionally considered an amenity. ~ Caleb Crain

It's sort of my fun to sing along with records and imitate people who are on the telephone that have different ways of speaking. ~ Meryl Streep

Sometimes when I'm having a boring interview on the telephone, and I'm trying to think about something else because the questions are too boring, and I start looking around the room where I work, you know, full of books piled up to the sky, all different kinds of topics. I start calculating how many centuries would I have to live reading twenty-four hours a day every day of the week to make a dent in what I'd like to learn about things, it's pretty depressing.[ ... ] You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything ... and know that we don't, that's the important part. ~ Noam Chomsky

Not "I'm sorry,Ericka," or "I suck," or "I lost all the feeling in my fingers and couldn't dial a telephone." Nothing!
I can't believe what I'm hearing.In fact, I can't believe what I'm not hearing. ~ Alecia Whitaker

Yet the personal choice to smoke is ... the same kind of choice as the driver who downed the beers, and then the telephone pole. - Open letter from the tobacco industry, 1988 ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Film's thought of as a director's medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It's that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they've had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve. ~ Billy Wilder

All I know is that my life is filled with little pockets of silence. When I put a record on the turntable, for example, there`s a little interval-between the time the needle touches down on the record and the time the music actually starts-during which my heart refuses to beat. All I know is that between the rings of the telephone, between the touch of a button and the sound of the radio coming on, between the dimming of the lights at the cinema and the start of the film, between the lightning and the thunder, between the shout and the echo, between the lifting of a baton and the opening bars of a symphony, between the dropping of a stone and the plunk that comes back from the bottom of a well, between the ringing of the doorbell and the barking of the dogs I sometimes catch myself, involuntarily, listening for the sound of my mother`s voice, still waiting for the tape to begin. ~ Robert Hellenga