Instead Of Waiting Quotes & Sayings

Now you'll have to wait for hours in line for medical care instead of immediately not getting any. — Stephen Colbert

Consciousness is anything you define it as. I tell people instead of waiting, just take any definition that you like, and use that, and run with it! So I don't think the issue is that we don't know what consciousness is. The issue is we don't have a consensus on what consciousness is. Far from it. — Stanley Krippner

A lobster, when left high and dry among the rock, does not have the sense enough to work his way back to the sea, but waits for the sea to come to him. If it does not come, he remains where he is and dies, although the slightest effort would enable him to reach the waves, which are perhaps within a yard of him. The world is full of human lobsters; people stranded on the rocks of indecision and procrastination, who, instead of putting forth their own energies, are waiting for some grand billow of good fortune to set them afloat. — Orison Swett Marden

This year I guess I decided in the bigger matches to take it more to my opponent instead of waiting a bit more for the mistakes. Yeah, this is I guess how you want to win Wimbledon, is by going after your shots, believing you can do it, and that's what I was able to do today. — Roger Federer

But instead of all that, here he was - the rich husband of an unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, who liked to eat, drink, and, unbuttoning himself, to denounce the government a little, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universally beloved member of Moscow society. — Leo Tolstoy

These small wins matter more because they are so much more likely to occur compared to the big break-throughs in the world. If we only waited for the big wins, we would be waiting a long time. And we would probably quit long before we saw anything tangible come to fruition. What you need instead of big wins is simply the forward momentum that small wins bring. — Hendrie Weisinger

Consider when, on a voyage, your ship is anchored; if you go on shore to get water you may along the way amuse yourself with picking up a shellish, or an onion. However, your thoughts and continual attention ought to be bent towards the ship, waiting for the captain to call on board; you must then immediately leave all these things, otherwise you will be thrown into the ship, bound neck and feet like a sheep. So it is with life. If, instead of an onion or a shellfish, you are given a wife or child, that is fine. But if the captain calls, you must run to the ship, leaving them, and regarding none of them. But if you are old, never go far from the ship: lest, when you are called, you should be unable to come in time. — Epictetus

Instead of our petulant, fretful, irritable human hastiness we should cultivate in our souls the patience which has learned to wait on God. — William Barclay

That was the week you learned that the killers of Michael Brown would go free. The men who had left his body in the street like some awesome declaration of their inviolable power would never be punished. It was not my expectation that anyone would ever be punished. But you were young and still believed. You stayed up till 11 P.M. that night, waiting for the announcement of an indictment, and when instead it was announced that there was none you said, "I've got to go," and you went into your room, and I heard you crying. I came in five minutes after, and I didn't hug you, and I didn't comfort you, because I thought it would be wrong to comfort you. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The group I am moving towards is at Caleb Garth's breakfast-table in the large parlor where the maps and desk were: father, mother, and five of the children. Mary was just now at home waiting for a situation, while Christy, the boy next to her, was getting cheap learning and cheap fare in Scotland, having to his father's disappointment taken to books instead of that sacred calling "business. — George Eliot

When you finally realize that peace is your natural state of being then you will know that any form of non-peace is a belief in illusion. Illusion that anything should be something other than what it is which can never be so. What if instead of waiting for what isn't to become your version of what is, why don't you be peaceful right now while you alter what isn't for you if you so choose? Is it ever worth it to wear a cloak of non-peacefulness over God Brilliance? — John Phillips

Vagabonding is about refusing to exile travel to some other, seemingly more appropriate, time of your life. Vagabonding is about taking control of your circumstances instead of passively waiting for them to decide your fate. — Rolf Potts

Sometimes it seems' said Grok, 'that the faces exist of themselves, in a disembodied somewhere, waiting for the clown who will wear them, who will bring them to life. Faces that wait in the mirrors of unknown dressing-rooms, unseen in the depths of the glass like fish in dusty pools, fish that will rise up out of the obscure profundity when they spot the one who anxiously scrutinises his own reflection for the face it lacks, man eating fish waiting to gobble up your being and give you another instead ... — Angela Carter

Stop waiting for others to tell you what you can do. Start putting faith into your own strengths and talents. Instead of questioning whether you can reach your goals, move forward with conviction and confidence. — Jane Powell

It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately fill up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.
-Pema Chodron, from When Things Fall Apart — Pema Chodron

In general the parallel between the popular uses of music and of pictures is close enough. Both consist of 'using' rather than 'receiving'. Both rush hastily forward to do things with the work of art instead of waiting for it to do something to them. — C.S. Lewis

For me, the word "writing" is the exact opposite of the word "waiting". Instead of waiting, there is writing. — Roberto Bolano

Instead of sitting down and waiting for miracles to come, is better to start planning your miracle. — Sunday Adelaja

In it not easy to remain rational and normal mentally in such a setting where, even in our airport in Montgomery, there is a white waiting room ... There are restroom facilities for white ladies and colored women, white men and colored men. We stand outside after being served at the same ticket counter instead of sitting on the inside. — Rosa Parks

Instead of negotiating or begging for mercy, [my brother Damascene] challenged them to kill him. "Go ahead," he said. "What are you waiting for? Today is my day to go to God. I can feel Him all around us. He is watching, waiting to take me home. Go ahead
finish your work and send me to paradise. I pity you for killing people like it's some kind of child's game. Murder is no game: If you offend God, you will pay for your fun. The blood of the innocent people you cut down will follow you to your reckoning. But I am praying for you ... I pray that you see the evil you're doing and ask God's forgiveness before it's too late. — Immaculee Ilibagiza

Ben's words called to my heart. Instead of responding with terror, it opened like a fist uncurling, as though it had been waiting twenty-six years just to hear his voice. — Anise Eden

Even most churches don't really know what to do with their singles. They teach classes on "preparing for marriage," "waiting for marriage," and "praying for marriage," but what about just honoring exactly who you are in this moment instead of always prepping for the next phase of life? — Mandy Hale

She waved, laughing, waiting for him to go zooming past her. Instead he slowed, then came to a stop right in front of her.
"What are you doing?" she demanded, as he put his foot on the asphalt. She pointed to the finish line, a scant hundred yards away. "Go."
People around them started screaming. Josh ignored them all.
He pulled off his glasses. "How you doing?"
"Josh! This isn't funny. Move." She glanced over his shoulder, knowing the other racers would appear at any second. "Just finish. You can win. Then we'll talk."
"We can talk now."
She shrieked. "No! I said I was wrong. I said I loved you. What more do you want?"
"You," he said. "For always."
"Yes, yes. You can have that. Now go. Cross the finish line. It's right there. Can't see it? Hurry."
"You'll marry me?"
The man next to her turned. "For God's sake, lady. Marry him already. — Susan Mallery

The idea [the government's 'You Win' campaign] is that instead of young people in Nigeria waiting to get employment, they should create their own jobs and employ their peers and employ other people. — Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

I think that my IQ level grew as a player. I think that I [run] the game a little bit better. I'm waiting for the game to come to me, and I'm picking and choosing my spots instead of just going out there and just doing whatever because I don't have to do that with this team. — Derrick Rose

I feel Man would be wise to work at correcting his own mistakes instead of waiting for intervention from on high, and should replace faith in an unknowable divine plan with a well-thought-out scheme of his own. — Mark Hodder

Judge Carter sat in stony silence, completely unmoved. At the end of the trial, he pronounced King guilty of conspiracy to violate the 1921 law and ordered him to pay a five-hundred-dollar fine or serve a year at hard labor. Like Judge Carter, the national newspaper and magazine reporters waiting outside for the ruling ignored the black women's testimonies that detailed decades of mistreatment and denied King's leadership in the boycott. Instead, the media turned King into an apostle of civil rights. — Danielle L. McGuire

Two months in Shanghai, and what does she have to show for herself? She had been full of plans on the plane ride over, had studied her phrase book as if cramming for an exam, had been determined to refine her computational model with a new set of data, expecting insights and breakthroughs, plotting notes for a new article. Only the time has trickled away so quickly. She has meandered through the days chatting with James instead of gathering data. At night, she has gone out to dinners and bars. [James'] Chinese has not improved; her computational model has barely been touched. She does not know what she has been doing with herself, and now an airplane six days away is waiting for her. — Ruiyan Xu

She wanted so to be tranquil, to be someone who took walks in the late-afternoon sun, listening to the birds and crickets and feeling the whole world breathe. Instead, she lived in her head like a madwoman locked in a tower, hearing the wind howling through her hair and waiting for someone to come and rescue her from feeling things so deeply that her bones burned. She had plenty of evidence that she had a good life. She just couldn't feel the life she had. It was as though she had cancer of the perspective. — Carrie Fisher

What we do with our lives every day, whether at school, a desk job, or keeping the home in order, is our most basic opportunity to glorify God. That's what your role in His story looks like day in and day out. Instead of waiting to be offered a new role, play the current one well. — Trip Lee

It seemed to me that if the lawyers failed to do their duty, they ought to pay people for waiting upon them, instead of making them pay for it. — R.D. Blackmore

But it didn't matter. Because all it proved was that my mother was sitting out there coatless somewhere, waiting to come home to me. Even as he stared at it, the remark "Your mother's dead" sitting unspoken, like something rotten in our path that neither one of us wanted to be the first to pick up. Even after the kind of day I had had, being taunted at school, and then threatened with incarceration. Even know that when I went home I would face a house full of ghosts, it didn't matter to me. Instead I felt a little stab of joy. — Polly Horvath

But once I'd come up with it, I realized it really was the perfect plan. Instead of waiting for Maria to come to me, I was simply going to go to her and, well ...
Send her back to where she came.
Or reduce her to a mound of quivering gelatinous goo. Whichever came first. — Meg Cabot

Sometimes you see English people going out to pub, bar or disco with friends, standing awkwardly together drinking beer or gin and tonic and waiting for something 'romantic' to happen. Usually nothing happens apart from everybody getting drunk, which is hardly romantic. So, typically, instead of meeting Mr or Miss Right they meet Mr or Miss Right Now, which lasts as long as there is enough alcohol circulating in the blood vessel. — Angela Kiss

That's why your lot in life isn't fate. I don't have any say in much of my life, but I make whatever choices I can make in my own rational best interest. It's my choice to fix those stairs and make the place I live a little better instead of whining and waiting and hoping for someone else to do something for me. I have pride that I know how to do that for myself. — Terry Goodkind

From dawn each day the boats traveled, until their shadows grew so long that they joined each vessel with the one behind so that, instead of resembling a procession of dark swans in the distance, they seemed to turn into snakes, inching forward on waters turned to fire by the western sunset ahead. While on the bank, the last red light from the huge sky eerily caught the stands of bare larch and birch so that it appeared as if whole armies with massed lances were waiting by the riverbank to greet them. — Edward Rutherfurd

Most people waste the best years of their life waiting for an adventure to come to them instead of going out and finding one. — Jeff Goins

In this day and age, there is a limitless plethora of readily available distractions just waiting to take your mind off what you were supposed to be doing, and instead keep you unproductive and unmotivated. With distractions so easy to come by, and society so geared towards instant gratification as opposed to "Hard graft" for results, it is little wonder that many people suffer from a condition most commonly referred to as laziness. — James Frankton

But if we learn to think of it as anticipation, as learning, as growing, if we think of the time we spend waiting for the big things of life as an opportunity instead of a passing of time, what wonderful horizons open out! — Anna Neagle

Sometimes it is not right to wait for the right train. Take any train instead of rotting at the station! In other words, be realistic! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

She lives as if she is constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away "from all this". All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else? — Erica Jong

Anything you dream [can] be yours simply because you've focused on the steps you could take instead of the distance to get there. — A.J. Darkholme

If you are in a remote desert island, let your best hope be your own efforts to build a ship instead of waiting for a ship to appear among the fogs! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

It's exciting to take control of your future instead of waiting for the phone to ring, — Jennifer Westfeldt

Changing the world is like trying to straighten a dog's tail. However much you may try, you won't succeed. But although the tail won't straighten, if you keep trying every day, at least you will put on some muscle. Similarly, even though it is difficult to make a change, our effort to do so in itself brings positive results. It will help us change. Without waiting for others to change,if we change ourselves first, that will make a difference. Instead of worrying about results, focus on doing our best in what we are engaged in. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Hide and Seek
It's hard not
to jump out
instead of waiting to be
found. It's
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It's
like some form
of skin's developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear. — Kay Ryan

In our twenties we have conflicts. We think everything is either-or, black or white: we are caught between them and we lose all our energy in the conflicts. My answer, later on in maturity, was to do them all. Not to exclude any, not to make a choice. I wanted to be everything. And I took everything in, and the more you take in, the more strength you find waiting to accomplish things and to expand your life, instead of the other (which is what we have been taught to do) which is to look for structure and to fear change, above all to fear change. Now I didn't fear change. — Anais Nin

Don't wait. Writers are the only artists I know of who expect to get somewhere by waiting. Everyone knows you have to dance to be a dancer, you have to sing to be a singer, you have to act to be an actor, but far too many people seem to believe that you. don't have to write to be a writer. So, instead of writing, they wait. Isaac Asimov said it beautifully in just six words: "It's the writing that teaches you." Writing is what teaches you. Writing is what leads to "inspiration." Writing is what generates ideas. Nothing else-and nothing less. Don't meditate, don't do yoga, don't do drugs. Just write. — Daniel Quinn

Public "facts" are not like pebbles on the beach, lying in the sun and waiting to be seen. They must instead be picked, polished, shaped and packaged. Finally ready for display they the bear the marks of their shapers. — Peter Conrad

If you don't look at me right this minute, Brody McTavish, I'm going to ---"
He swung on her. Had she not been standing flatfooted she would have stumbled back. Instead, she was rooted to the ground as suddenly he was in her face. "I've been listening to you and I've been looking at you for years," he said, his voice deep and thick with emotion. "I've been waiting for you to grow up." His voice faltered as he dropped his horse's reins. "Because I've been wanting to do this since you were sixteen."
Grabbing her, he pulled her against his rock-hard body. His mouth dropped to hers. Her lips parted of their own accord, just as her arms wrapped around his neck. Her heart hammered against her ribs as he deepened the kiss and she heard herself moan. — B. J. Daniels

Have you heard of the legends of sleeping kings? The legends that heroes like Llewellyn and Glendower and Arthur aren't really dead, but are instead sleeping in tombs, waiting to be woken? — Maggie Stiefvater

The so-called sexual revolution is not, as advertised, a liberation of sexual behavior but rather its reversal. In former days, even under Victoria, sexual intercourse was the natural end and culmination of heterosexual relations. Now one begins with genital overtures instead of a handshake, then waits to see what will turn up (e.g., might become friends later). Like dogs greeting each other nose to tail and tail to nose. — Walker Percy

Didn't you know I was out here, just waiting for a friend like you?"
"Of course I didn't know. I'd have been dancing on top of every bar in town, instead of studying, if I'd known that."
"Tell me not to kiss you," he said, when his lips were a breath away from mine.
"Don't kiss me," I told him, my voice a breathless rasp.
"Mean it," he said, crowding me into the corner of the pool.
He tilted my chin up with his finger.
"I can't," I gasped.
The words had barely left my lips before he was kissing me. — R.K. Lilley

By the time the sixties hit their home bases, we the kids, were already born, and our parents found themselves stuck between an entrenched belief that children needed to be raised in a traditional household, and a new sense that anything was possible, that the alternative lifestyle was out there for the asking. There they were in marriages they once thought were a necessity and with children they'd had almost by accident in a world that was suddenly saying, 'No necessities! No accidents! Drop Everything!' A little too old to take full advantage of the cultural revolution, our parents just got all the fallout. Freedom hit them obliquely, and invidiously, rather than head-on. Instead of waiting longer to get married, our parents got divorced; Instead of becoming feminists, our mothers were left to become displaced homemakers. A lot of unhappy situations were dissolved by people who were not quite young or free enough to start again. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

Can you make it past me, thief-catcher?" Mat called, careful not to take his eyes off the man waiting for him with blade poised to strike. Sandar had insisted irritably on "thief-catcher," not "thief-taker," though Mat could not see any difference.
"I cannot," Sandar called from behind him. "If you move to let me by, you will lose room to swing that oar you call a staff, and he will spit you like a grunt."
Like a what? "Well, think of something, Tairen. This ragamuffin is grating my nerves."
The man in the gold-striped coat sneered. "You will be honored to die on the blade of the High Lord Darlin, peasant, if I allow it so." It was the first time he had deigned to speak. "Instead, I think I will have the pair of you hung by the heels, and watch while the skin is stripped from your bodies - "
"I do not think I'd like that," Mat said. — Robert Jordan

It was exciting and intellectually gratifying to speculate on what might lie waiting in the black gulfs when one was behind the business end of a telescope, quite another to do so isolated on an unpleasant little speck of a world such as this, confronted by a ship of non-human manufacture that uncomfortably resembled a growth instead of a familiar device for manipulating and overcoming the neat laws of physics. — Alan Dean Foster

Yet Jesus Christ says he is standing knocking at the door of our lives, waiting. Notice that he is standing at the door, not pushing it; speaking to us, not shouting. This is all the more remarkable when we reflect that the house is his in any case. He is the architect; he designed it. He is the builder; he made it. He is the landlord; he bought it with his own blood. So it is his by right of plan, construction, and purchase. We are only tenants in a house that does not belong to us. He could put his shoulder to the door; he prefers to put his hand on the knocker. He could command us to open to him; instead, he merely invites us to do so. He will not force an entry to anybody's life. He says (verse 18) 'I counsel you.' He could issue orders; he is content to give advice. This is the nature of his humility and the extent of the freedom he has given us. — John R.W. Stott

I promise not to step on you - I only look like a clodhopper," he was saying when Jo reached them. He winked at Ella, who glanced away and blinked, as if surprised that he'd come so close to guessing what she thought.
Jo slid up to the bar behind her sister, planted a stiff arm on the ledge, and raised an eyebrow at him.
He glanced up and saw her.
She expected him to blanche, or bristle, or pretend he'd just forgotten someplace else he had to be. A lot of men did that, when they realized that the girl they thought was alone had brought friends to look out for her.
But instead he only said, "Oh," softly, his smile so wide and earnest that crows'-feet appeared at the edges of his eyes; he smiled as though she was an old friend, as though he had been waiting for Jo a long time and was delighted to see her at last. — Genevieve Valentine

But now, sitting on this airplane on my way back to the life I went on to fashion after she left, I think of her differently. I see her so many ways: sitting back on her heels at the side of the bathtub, singing softly as she washes Sharla and my backs; watching at the window for the six o'clock arrival of our father; wrapping Christmas presents on the wide expanse of her bed; biting her lip as she stood before the open cupboards, making out the grocery list; leaning out the kitchen window that last summer to call Sharla and me in for supper. Most clearly, though, I see her sitting at the kitchen table, in her old, usual spot. There is a cup of coffee before her, but she doesn't drink it. Instead, she stares out the window. I see the sharp angle of her cheekbone, the beautiful whitish down at the side of face, illuminated by the sun. Her hands are quiet, resting in the cloth bowl of her apron. She sits still as a statue - waiting, I can see now; she was always waiting. -What We Keep — Elizabeth Berg

Never marry a beautiful woman. Worship them if you must, go to bed with them if you can - by all means, everyone should have carnal knowledge of physical perfection at least once in their life - but when it comes to marriage, it's a losing proposition. You will never stop feeling like a gatecrasher at your own party. Instead of feeling lucky, you will spend your life on edge, waiting for the other stiletto to fall and puncture your heart like a bullet. — Anonymous

My mother had always taught me to write about my feelings instead of sharing really personal things with others, so I spent many evenings writing in my diary, eating everything in the kitchen and waiting for Mr. Wrong to call. — Cathy Guisewite

Its better to change yourself instead of waiting for others to change for you. — Parvez3786

Interviews were invented to make journalism less passive. Instead of waiting for something to happen, journalists ask someone what should or could happen. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Eminent monotheists in all three faiths - that instead of waiting for God to descend from on high, I should deliberately create a sense of him for myself. — Karen Armstrong

Life is what you make it and legacy is what you leave it. Stop trying to be perfect, stop waiting for perfection to find you, and start making your environment a product of you instead of the other way around. — A.J. Darkholme

Mary stood beside Wilbur, waiting as he sewed Henrietta's abdomen closed. She wanted to run out of the morgue and back to the lab, but instead, she stared at Henrietta's arms and legs - anything to avoid looking into her lifeless eyes. Then Mary's gaze fell on Henrietta's feet, and she gasped: Henrietta's toenails were covered in chipped bright red polish. "When I saw those toenails," Mary told me years later, "I nearly fainted. I thought, Oh jeez, she's a real person. I started imagining her sitting in her bathroom painting those toenails, and it hit me for the first time that those cells we'd been working with all this time and sending all over the world, they came from a live woman. I'd never thought of it that way." — Rebecca Skloot

Instead of discussing with myself every morning whether I feel inspired or not, I step into my office every day at nine sharp, open the window and politely ask the muse to enter and kiss me. Sometimes she comes in, more often she does not. But she can never claim that she hasn't found me waiting in the right place. — Peter Prange

My mother has always been the point I calibrated myself against. In knowing where she was, I could always locate myself, as well. These months she'd been gone, I felt like I'd been floating, loose and boundaryless, but now that I knew where she was, I kept waiting for a kind of certainty to kick in. It didn't. Instead, I was more unsure than ever, stuck between this new life and the one I'd left behind. — Sarah Dessen

I'd like to be able to be more topical and timely and more of-the-moment and I think the way to do that is, instead of waiting until I have twelve songs to release all at once, just to release them as I come up with them. — Al Yankovic

I do what most women do. I meet someone and some of it's right, maybe he looks right, or has the right job, or the right background, and, instead of sitting back and waiting for him to reveal his other bits, I make them up. I decide how he thinks, how he's going to treat me, and, sure enough, every time I conclude that this time he's definitely my perfect man, and all of a sudden, well, not so suddenly perhaps, usually around six months after we've split up, I see that he wasn't the person I thought he was at all. — Jane Green

All my life, I've thought that if I couldn't say anything boys found interesting, I might as well shut up. But now I realize there was that whole other, invisible half of the world - girls - that I could speak to instead. A whole other half equally silent and frustrated, just waiting to be given the smallest starting signal - the tiniest starter culture - and they would explode into words, and song, and action, and relieved, euphoric cries of "Me too! I feel this too! — Caitlin Moran

When you wash your hands, when you make a cup of coffee, when you're waiting for the elevator - instead of indulging in thinking, these are all opportunities for being there as a still, alert presence. — Eckhart Tolle

Stop being an adrenaline junkie who is waiting for the happy ending instead of seeing the happy being. — Andrea T. Goeglein

Do I ever get tired of being the first female everything? Not really, I just happened to be in a position where the job that I wanted was not really there for me. I had to create an opportunity instead of waiting for an opportunity. — Ronda Rousey

When a highly successful leader retires after a long career, it is very unlikely that his successor will be of comparable caliber. Anyone of similar ability and drive would have gone somewhere else, instead of waiting in the wings for years for a chance to show his own leadership. — Thomas Sowell

E were always taught, instead of waiting to be swept off our feet, to 'expect little, forgive much'. — Helen Fielding

Education is spreading hope. Millions are now learning to live with HIV/AIDS - instead of waiting to die from it. — Laura Bush

The city is all right. To live in one
Is to be civilized, stay up and read
Or sing and dance all night and see sunrise
By waiting up instead of getting up. — Robert Frost

Did you ever feel, as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren't using - you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines? — Aldous Huxley

Let me get this straight," Eli said, as if trying to be calm even though I could tell he was upset. "Instead of returning to your own body, you swapped with my sister?"

"Yes."

"So while I was waiting for you to wake up, holding your hand and saying...well, things I would never say to my sister...it was her and not you?"

"Um...yeah. — Linda Joy Singleton

What if you could meet your soul mate?" the ghost asked. "You 'd want to avoid that?"
"Hell, yes. The idea that there's one soul out there, waiting to merge with mine like some data-sharing program, depresses the hell out of me."
"It's not like that. It's not about losing yourself."
"Then what is it?" Alex was only half listening, still occupied with the viselike tightness of his chest.
"It's like your whole life you 've been falling toward the earth, until the moment someone catches you. And you realise that somehow you 've caught her at the same time. And together, instead of falling, you might be able to fly. — Lisa Kleypas

And yet, his eyes kept drifting to the walkway beside the canal, his impatience growing. He was better than this. Waiting was the part of the criminal life so many people got wrong. They wanted to act instead of hold fast and gather information. They wanted to know instantly without having to learn. Sometimes the trick to getting the best of a situation was just to wait. If you didn't like the weather, you didn't rush into the storm - you waited until it changed. You found a way to keep from getting wet. — Leigh Bardugo

Somewhere in my heart a little door closed with a clean, quiet "snick." I was through with Mike Terwilliger. And he had moved on to a woman who, while she obviously didn't make him entirely happy, was still better suited to him than I was. Whether he stayed with her or left her within a year, I knew it wouldn't affect me either way. Instead of waiting for them to collapse on themselves, I would be living my life. I may not have wished them well, but at least I wasn't devoting precious energy to wishing they would spontaneously combust. — Molly Harper

I don't believe in waiting for a horse to do the wrong thing and then punishing him after the fact. You can't just say no to a horse. You have to redirect a negative behavior with a positive one, something that works for both of you. It's as though you're saying - instead of doing that, we can do this together. — Buck Brannaman

Does everyone grow the way you do?" puffed Milo when he had caught up.
"Almost everyone," replied Alec, and then he stopped a moment and thought. "Now and then, though, someone does begin to grow differently. Instead of down, his feet grow up towards the sky. But we do our best to discourage awkward things like that."
"What happens to them?" insisted Milo.
"Oddly enough, they often grow ten times the size of everyone else," said Alec thoughtfully, "and I've heard that they walk among the stars." And with that he skipped off once again toward the waiting woods. — Norton Juster

Playing in an orchestra is completely different to playing on my own.
Sometimes I played, sometimes listened; instead of waiting my turn, I sometimes interrupted another player, sometimes I argued, sometimes agreed.
My flute is my mouthpiece and I felt as if I was actually joining in a conversation. — Kevin Crossley-Holland

I'm thinking of doing everything now, including this stupid act of waiting for someone in front of their house so you should do the same. You have no thoughts of becoming the little mermaid, so that's why I'll be come the little mermaid instead. I'll be right next to you as if I am not there and disappear like foam. So right now, I am the one shamelessly hanging on to you. — Joo

Nessa had never really felt truly beautiful before, but tonight she not only understood that she was beautiful, she understood that everyone was. That for all the competition and fear and knowing that the next runner was coming up behind you, she had been missing out on how beautiful life could be. She should have been watching and appreciating others instead of waiting inside herself for the right time to shine. The time was now. — C.D. Bell

When my phone chimes with a text message on Monday morning, I'm still in that dreamy state between sleep and awake where you can pretty much convince yourself of anything. Like that a teen Mick Jagger is waiting in your driveway to take you to school. Or that your favorite book series ended with an actual satisfying conclusion, instead of what the author tried to pass off as a satisfying conclusion. — Jessica Brody

Open the door by yourself instead of waiting the door to be opened by itself! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Can I tell you something? It wasn't so bad. Not so bad at all right then, me scowling at the dirt, James in his bed, the way it always always was. Look, if that's all that happened, if his dying just meant that I would be waiting for him to say something instead of listening to him say something, it would have been fine. — Elizabeth McCracken

I think ... the secret is to just settle for the shape of your life takes ... Instead of you know, always waiting and wishing for what might make you happy. — Wally Lamb

Who reads short stories? one is asked, and I like to think that they are read by men and women in the dentist's office, waiting to be called to the chair; they are read on transcontinental plane trips instead of watching banal and vulgar films spin out the time between our coasts; they are read by discerning and well-informed men and women who seem to feel that narrative fiction can contribute to our understanding of one another and the sometimes bewildering world around us. — John Cheever

When I see 16 year-olds waiting for me, I just want to spank them and give them guitars and tell them to start bands. It's a bummer that girls have to respond to rock artists sexually instead of, like, 'wow, me too!'. — Courtney Love

Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the more they will dwindle. At least you could use it for a summer resort instead of Maine. — W. H. Auden

Society is made up of individuals. The thoughts and actions of each individual influence the culture of that society. Instead of waiting for others to improve, we should try to improve ourselves. Once our attitude has changed, we will be able to perceive goodness throughout world. If there is a positive change in us, it will also be reflected in others. It is only what we give that we can hope to get back. — Mata Amritanandamayi

The buttons I usually push don't need my force, only my intention. Buttons are supposed to be servants, waiting to deliver your commands to the machine. Instead, this loud, dumb piece of steel I'm driving demands that I pay strict attention to every turn of the road, keep my hands and feet ready at all times.
The car takes no responsibility for the job of driving. It leaves me in total control.
I hate it. I don't want control. I just want to get there — Daniel H. Wilson

We must meditate on what God has done in our life instead of what we are still waiting on Him to do. — Joyce Meyer

Too many people go through life waiting for things to happen instead of making them happen! — Sasha Azevedo

It's hard not
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It's
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It's
like some form
of skin's developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.
Hide and Seek — Kay Ryan