Quotes about waiting
page 5

“I'm not the hero, Mac. Never have been. Never will be. Let us be perfectly clear: I'm not the antihero, either, so quit waiting to discover my hidden potential. There's nothing to redeem me.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

“But she's wrong about hell. You don't have to wait until you're dead to get there.”

Susan Beth Pfeffer book Life As We Knew It

Source: Life As We Knew It

Hell, Dead

“One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Life, God

“… if a child waited to speak until all the grown-ups settled down and gave her some room to say her piece, the most important things would never get said.”

Katherine Hannigan Ida B.

Source: Ida B.

“Do you love me?’ he asked instead. ‘Because if you don’t, I’d wait until you did. I’d wait weeks and months and years.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Quintana of Charyn

Love

“For indeed you have a choice. You can flee and hide, and wait to be found. You can live out your days in terror, without meaning. Or you can take the harder choice, and you can save them.”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

“But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Variant: Why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?
Source: On the Road

Thinking

“Constellations shine with light that was emitted aeons ago, and I wait for something to come to me, words that a poet might use to illuminate life's mysteries. But there is nothing.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Wedding

Source: The Wedding

Life, Light

“That was the one thing she knew now. Some chances came and went, and if you missed them, you could spend the rest of your life standing alone, waiting for an opportunity that had already passed you by.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Angel Falls

Life, Chance

“Don’t waste time waiting for inspiration. Begin, and inspiration will find you.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Time

“… sitting and waiting is one of the most miserable occupations known to man - not that it usually is known to men; women do it much more often.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Women, Men

“He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

World, Understanding, Time

“To live and let live, without clamor for distinction or recognition; to wait on divine love; to write truth first on the tablet of one's own heart - this is the sanity and perfection of living, and my human ideal.”

Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) religious leader

Love, Truth, Heart, Perfection

“Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Peace, Change, Heart, Joy

“Don't wait for it," I said. "Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. Create. And then the love will come to you, then it comes to you. It was only when I wrote my first book that the world I wanted to live in opened to me.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anais Nin Volume 1 1931-1934: Vol. 1

Love, Books, World

“You never let things go unanswered for too long. Emails. Phone calls. Questions. As if you know the waiting is the hardest part for me.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Question, Parting

“To make someone wait: the constant prerogative of all power, "age-old pastime of humanity".”

Roland Barthes book A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Source: A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Age

“You lethargic, waiting upon me,
waiting for the fire and I
attendant upon you, shaken by your beauty

Shaken by your beauty
Shaken.”

William Carlos Williams book Paterson

Source: Paterson

Beauty

“The thing was, if I had found a way to escape- even for just a little while- I knew the pain would be there waiting for me when I got back.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Bruiser

Pain, Way

“The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.”

Roland Barthes book A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Source: A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Lovers

“The desire to never leave your side, the desire to never see you again. The desire to see your face asleep on the pillow beside my face and to see your eyes open in the morning when I lie next to you—just watching you, waiting for you to wake up.”

John Irving book Until I Find You

Source: Until I Find You

Lie

“Crowds of questions stream through me like lines of people exiting a soccer ground or a concert. They push and shove and trip. Some make their way around. Some remain in their seats, waiting for their opportunity.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

People, Way, Question

“Well, I guess I can wait two weeks then."
"for what?"
"to ask her out”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

“I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Mood

“You're off to great places. Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So… get on your way.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Oh, the Places You'll Go! (1990)
Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Way, Mountain

“Love is the answer. But while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Also found http://books.google.com/books?id=kd41AQAAIAAJ&q=%22love+is+the+answer%22#search_anchor in "Quotations According to Woody Allen" http://books.google.com/books?id=kd41AQAAIAAJ&q=%22quotations+according%22#search_anchor from the New York Times, 1 December 1975.

Love, Sex, Question

“It will hurt. Because deep down, I'll know there was someone.. someone I was supposed to have met. Only I'll never meet him. I'll go through my whole life waiting for him to come along, only he never will. What kind of life is that?”

Meg Cabot book Twilight

Source: Twilight

Life, Hurt

“If you leave me naked and waiting on the bed without making love to me, I’ll—” I didn’t get to finish the threat. I think it was the word “naked,” though maybe it was “bed,” but before I finished my sentence, he was on me. Mercy to Adam”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Love, Making love, Thinking

“We search for patterns, you see, only to find where the patterns break. And it’s there, in that fissure, that we pitch our tents and wait.”

Nicole Krauss book Great House

Source: Great House

“To him the stars seemed like so many musical notes affixed to the sky, just waiting for somebody to unfasten them. Someday the sky would be emptied, but by then the earth would be a constellation of musical scores”

Machado de Assis (1839–1908) Brazilian writer

Source: The Devil's Church and Other Stories

Music, Star

“Q: What is a fundamental mistake of man's?
A: To think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life's waiting-room.”

Idries Shah book Seeker After Truth

Source: Seeker After Truth

Life, Thinking

“Time, dear friend, time brings round opportunity; opportunity is the martingale of man. The more we have ventured the more we gain, when we know how to wait.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

Time

“I let it ring. I wanted to breathe for a few minutes, and I could think of nothing that couldn't wait. Besides, I had paid almost $50 for an answering machine. Let it earn its keep.”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Thinking

“He shook his head. “No. Because there's no one else out there who understands you like I do.”
I waited for more. “That's it? You're not going to elaborate on what that means?”
Those green eyes held me. “I don't think I need to.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Understanding, Thinking

“I never pump up my vulgarity. I wait for it to arrive in its own terms.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

“Waiting turns men into bears in a barn, and women into cats in a sack.”

Robert Jordan The Fires of Heaven

Lini
(15 October 1993)
Source: The Fires of Heaven

Women, Men, Cats

“If you knew where your happiness came from, it gave you patience. You realized that a lot of the time, you were just waiting out a situation, and that took the pressure off; you no longer looked to every interaction to actually do something for you.”

Curtis Sittenfeld book Prep

Source: Prep

Time, Patience, Happiness

“Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Education, Time, Reading

“Lena knew she had spent too much of her life in a state of passive dread, just waiting for something bad to happen. In a life like that, relief was as close as you got to happiness.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Life, Happiness

“Each of us carries a room within ourselves, waiting to be furnished and peopled, and if you listen closely, you may need to silence everything in your own room, you can hear the sounds of that other room inside your head.”

Susan Sontag book In America

Source: In America

People, Silence

“Ah, Los Angeles! Dust and fog of your lonely streets. I am no longer lonely. Just you wait, all of you ghosts of this room, just you wait, because it will happen yet, and that Camilla, she can have her Sammy in the desert, with his cheap short stories and stinking prose, but wait until she has a taste of me, because it will happen, as sure as there's a God in heaven.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939)

God, Angels

“Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Thinking

“What are you talking about?" Narcissus demanded. "I am amazing. Everyone knows this."
"Amazing at pure suck," Leo said. "If I was as suck as you, I'd drown myself. Oh wait, you already did that.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

“And I was struck all at once how life was out there going through its regular courses, and I was suspended, waiting, caught in a terrible crevice between living my life and not living it.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees (2002)

Life

“Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Variant: Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person has to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.
Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Personality

“The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to sharpen.”

Eden Phillpotts (1862–1960) British author

Variant: The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Universe

“Whatever happened to the good old days when books just got along, cozied up together on bookshelves, hanging out, waiting to be read?”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Burned

Books, Reading

“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

Carrie Fisher book Wishful Drinking

Variant: Resentment is like drinking a poison and waiting for the other person to die.
Source: Wishful Drinking

Drink, Personality

“I stand here waiting. To disappear or sing.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: Girl Goddess #9: Nine Stories

Singing

“"Well you'll have to wait 'til tomorrow. I'm out of commission." He pointed at himself. "Look. Jammies."”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Jace to Clary, pg. 324
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

“It is at the edge of the
petal that love waits”

William Carlos Williams book Spring and All

Source: Spring and All

Love

“What about a hoverboard?"
"It's waiting on the roof, of course." Dr. Cable snorted. "What is it about you miscreants and those things?”

Scott Westerfeld book Specials

Source: Specials

“How much of human life is lost in waiting.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Life

“Waiting silently is the hardest thing of all. I was dying to talk to Jim and about Jim. But the things that we feel most deeply we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control

God, Feeling, Learning

“The waste of intelligence. A community that finds it natural to suffocate with the care of home and children so many women’s intellectual energies is its own enemy and doesn’t realize it.” I waited in silence”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

Source: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Women, Children, Home, Intelligence

“… why did we wait for any thing? — why not seize the pleasure at once? — How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma (1815)

Pleasure, Happiness

“Wroth, darling,” she purred, smiling so sweetly. “I can’t wait for the next time I get to put my mouth on you.” In an instant the smile faded and she snapped her teeth and yanked her head back as if she was chewing something free.”

Kresley Cole book The Warlord Wants Forever

Source: The Warlord Wants Forever

Smile, Time

“i wait. with all my dreams, i know her heart, and i know i'm almost there.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Dreams, Heart

“I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface”

Philip Roth book American Pastoral

Source: American Pastoral

“A girl doesn't always want to go out, you know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Sometimes she feels like being nasty--like, if the guy's gonna wait, let him really wait.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Guy, Feeling, Girl, Bird

“Do not wait for the healing to arrive. It will never come. The holes will never leave or be filled with anything at all.

But holes are interesting things.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

“Yesterday and tomorrow cross and mix on the skyline. The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets, one waits.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

Forgetting

“He said a bad word. Do you want to know what it was? It started with F. It's not the one you're thinking of, though. To the other one. The one that ends with P. do you want to know what it was? It was troop." She frowned. "Wait that's not a word.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Kingdom of the Wicked

Thinking

“She knew what it was to wait for someone who would never come home. She knew that grief, like a scar, faded but never really went away.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

Home

“He's too much for Schuyler. They're wrong for each other. Anyone can see that.
And when he leaves her, I'll be there.
However long it takes, I'll still be there for her.
Waiting.”

Melissa de la Cruz Blue Bloods

Source: Blue Bloods

“if I wait to be
perfect
before I love myself
I will always be
unsatisfied
and ungrateful

if I wait until
all the flaws, chips,
and cracks disappear
I will be the cup
that stands on the shelf
and is never used”

Joyce Rupp (1943) American writer

Love, Perfection

“Some people fall apart when they get hurt. Puddle into apathy and despair and never recover. They wait all their lives for someone to come along and rescue them.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

People, Hurt, Despair

“Now all you can do is wait. It must be hard for you, but there is a right time for everything. Like the ebb and flow of tides. No one can do anything to change them. When it is time to wait, you must wait.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Change, Time

“I see the strongest and the smartest men who have ever lived… and these men are pumping gas and waiting tables.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Men

“I can't go all my life waiting to catch you between husbands.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Life

“A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps in her, waiting to be stirred.”

Steve Martin book Shopgirl

Source: Shopgirl

Girl, Lovers, Sleep

“… and there was nothing to do except to wait and to hurt.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Hurt

“Besides, secretly, without knowing it herself, she had been waiting for a Beast to go to.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

“And there I sat, long long ago, waiting for the world to know me.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

World

“To him the stars seemed like so many musical notes affixed to the sky, just waiting for somebody to unfasten them.”

Machado de Assis (1839–1908) Brazilian writer

Music, Star

“I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.”

Pat Conroy book The Prince of Tides

Source: The Prince of Tides

Life, Knowledge

“I left him in his wheelchair, staring sadly into the fireplace. I wondered how many times he’d sat here, waiting for heroes that never came back.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Time

“I knew from the moment I heard you, the moment I saw the gun and realized that this lovely, petit woman was the executioner, that you would never die waiting for me to save you - that you would save yourself.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Narcissus in Chains

Source: Narcissus in Chains

Love

“Ybon was the one who suggested calling the wait something else. Yeah, like what? Maybe, she said, you could call it life.”

Junot Díaz book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Life

“The human heart is like a night bird. Silently waiting for something, and when the time comes, it flies straight toward it.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Bird, Time, Heart, Night

“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison, and then waiting around for the rat to die.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Traveling Mercies
Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Forgiveness, Drink

“You don't need to wait for inspiration to write. It's easier to be inspired while writing that while not writing…”

Josip Novakovich (1956) Canadian writer

Source: Fiction Writer's Workshop

“But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start.”

Jess Walter book Beautiful Ruins

Source: Beautiful Ruins

Life, People, Thinking

“If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Source: The Clowns of God (1981), Ch. II (ellipses in original) 
This statement begins with a quotation from Horace, Odes, Book I, Ode ix, line 13.
Context: "Forbear to ask what tomorrow may bring" … If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine.

Life