Cables Quotes

“There had been no crises of incident, or marked movements of experience such as in Felipe's imaginations of love were essential to the fulness of its growth. This is a common mistake on the part of those who have never felt love's true bonds. Once in those chains, one perceives that they are not of the sort full forged in a day. They are made as the great iron cables are made, on which bridges are swung across the widest water-channels,--not of single huge rods, or bars, which would be stronger, perhaps, to look at; but myriads of the finest wires, each one by itself so fine, so frail, it would barely hold a child's kite in the wind: by hundreds, hundreds of thousands of such, twisted, re-twisted together, are made the mighty cables, which do not any more swerve from their place in the air, under the weight and jar of the ceaseless traffic and tread of two cities, than the solid earth swerves under the same ceaseless weight and jar. Such cables do not break.”

“The mechanism of the clock was enclosed in a box resembling a large cupboard, but I was disappointed with the workings. They were much smaller than I had anticipated. The clock was worked by heavy weights suspended on long cables. My father picked up a handle like the crank handle of a car and wound them up. There were two of them. One to work the hands, the other controlling the hammer which struck out the hours on a large bell. Then the mousetraps were set, Not to catch mice, but to control the lighting. Previously my father had to make a special trip each evening to switch on the lights of the clock, returning near midnight to switch them off. To obviate this he invented a method of light control which may have been unique. Two switches, one for switching on and the other for switching off were used. They were fixed on the inside wall of the tower. A mousetrap mounted near each switch was so arranged that when the trap sprung, the arc traversed by the closing trap enabled the switch to be flicked on or off as required. Adjustable sleeves were set along the the cables for required times. The sleeves on the descending cables tripped the mouse traps which actuated the switches.”

“(Regarding the Roosevelt Tram along Queensboro Bridge):"They had it renovated by the French. French cars. French cables. Cables that surrender! Would you ride in a tram that surrenders? I sure as hell wouldn't!”

“I have a message for your daughter,” said Cale. “I am bound to her with cables that not even God can break. One day, if there is a soft breeze on her cheek, it may be my breath; one night, if the cool wind plays with her hair, it may be my shadow passing by.” And with this terrible threat he faced forward and the procession started once more. In less than a minute they were gone. In her shady room Arbell Swan-Neck stood white and cold as alabaster.”

“Habits are at first cobwebs then cables.”

“Teaching school is like having jumper cables hooked to your brain, draining all the juice out of you.”

“...there were those who might have suggested that reality is a highly untrustworthy concept, something perhaps no more solid than a piece of canvas stretched over an interlacing of cables like the strands of a spiderweb.”

“And I have been able to give freedom and life which was acknowledged in the ecstasy of walking hand in hand across the most beautiful bridge of the world, the cables enclosing us and pulling us upward in such a dance as I have never walked and never can walk with another.”

“Autism is a neurological disorder. It's not caused by bad parenting. It's caused by, you know, abnormal development in the brain. The emotional circuits in the brain are abnormal. And there also are differences in the white matter, which is the brain's computer cables that hook up the different brain departments.”