mysql --quick is not buffering the result and send it strayed to cpimport , if not uses on big table cpimport will timeout waiting for data
query a big table via mysql -e"select start from bigtable" | more , there is good chance that you never get any result until tcp timeout

same command using --quick or -q give instant result to proceed

Documenting in KB the way to make a direct extract import should be improved to get as imple as possible

We used :
mysql -N -h remote_mariadb -u import_user -p import_password -q -e 'select * from test.test"| cpimport -s'\t' test test