Busy Signal Quotes & Sayings

I mean, do you know what you get when you call a suicide hotline in New York city? A busy signal. Literally. — Brian K. Vaughan

Someone asked me whether I was aware of all the people out there who were praying for the President. And I had to say, "Yes, I am. I've felt it. I believe in intercessory prayer." But I couldn't help but say to that questioner after he'd asked the question that - or at least say to them that if sometimes when he was praying he got a busy signal, it was just me in there ahead of him. — Ronald Reagan

Tallent notes that the days surrounding the death are marked not by keening or weeping but instead by a dignified, almost majestical, sense of quiet and contemplation. The deceased's immediate family continues to go about their daily rituals, but their silence, their lack of chatter in this busy, intimate community, is a ritual in itself, and the other villagers give them peace until the bereaved signal their intention to return to the life of the community. Sometimes this silent mourning takes only days; sometimes it takes months. But it is a remarkable demonstration of being absent in a place so intensely present, of being granted solitude while surrounded by many — Hanya Yanagihara

We have met the Devil of Information Overload and his impish underlings, the computer virus, the busy signal, the dead link, and the PowerPoint presentation. — James Gleick

I dial up the suicide prevention hotline, get a busy signal, and wonder if that's a sign of the times. — Troy James Weaver

[The Internet] ... is an amazing communications tool that's bringing the whole world together. I mean, you sit down to sign on to America Online in your hometown, and it's just staggering to think that at the same moment, halfway around the world, in China, someone you've never met is sitting at their computer, hearing the exact same busy signal that you're hearing. — Dennis Miller

His shirt is rumpled. His fingers, long and slender, are stained yellow at the tips from smoking. His mind is always on something else. My mind is busy, too, reading every cue and signal, keeping track of all the things that cannot be discussed, that must not be remembered, that have to be erased. — Kristen Iversen

Fear is nature's warning signal to get busy. — Henry C. Link

RHETORIC The art of making life less believable; the calculated use of language, not to alarm but to do full harm to our busy minds and properly dispose our listeners to a pain they have never dreamed of. The context of what can be known establishes that love and indifference are forms of language, but the wise addition of punctuation allows us to believe that there are other harms - the dash gives the reader the clear signal they are coming. — Ben Marcus

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

The dance took place on a viewpoint level of Tower Four. Each hour, the whole floor would make a single revolution, so couples at tables could see both the city and the ocean. This was by far its lowest-tech feature. The Synth-Bio Club had engineered all manner of plants and animals just for the occasion: grabby little tentacular vines that climbed up the walls, twirling maple keys that danced and spun in the air like pixies and spiralled up from whatever surface they touched, butterflies that dampened signal by flapping their Faraday wings.
None of the students really noticed. They were too busy miming anal on the dance floor. — Madeline Ashby