Every time the telephone rings, you feel a frisson of excitement. The call is almost never exciting, but it is in our character to keep on believing.

The telephone is needed for
Emergency purposes only
These people are not
Emergencies, they are
Calamities.

The telephone ringing gave me a dreadful start. I have never got used to this machine, the way it crouches so malevolently, ready to start clamouring for attention when you least expect it, like a mad baby.

Pay phones,
relics of an almost-vanished landscape,
always a touch of seediness and sadness,
and a sense of transience,
sweaty phones used by men outside maternity wards,
feeding them fistfuls of change.

The telephone was not his favorite object, and more than once he had considered getting rid of his. What he disliked most of all was its tyranny. Not only did it have the power to interrupt him against his will, but inevitably he would give in to its command.

I've not seen anything like this before - the faxes, e-mails, telephone calls - in terms of an emergency, ... We are getting resources together and getting that information to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA).