Quotes & Sayings About Waiting For Something Better

The standards for what is "normal" have become so formalized and yet so restrictive that people need a break from that horrible feeling of never being able to measure up to whatever it is they think will make them acceptable to other people and therefore to themselves. People get sick with this idea of change; I have been sick with it. We search for transformation in retreats, juice fasts, drugs and alcohol, obsessive exercise, extreme sports, sex. We are all trying to escape our existence, hoping that a better version of us is waiting just behind that promotion, that perfect relationship, that award or accolade, that musical performance, that dress size, that raucous night at a party, that hot night with a new lover. Everyone needs to be pursuing something, right? Otherwise, who are we? How about, quite simply, people? How about human? — Emily Rapp

You become a writer on a television show, and you see yourself doing bigger and better things, you don't wait till they tell you, "Here's the way to do bigger and better things," you start writing. You start writing that material that you might be doing off to the side. Nobody's going to be paying you for that, but it could turn into something big. — Ice Cube

In my opinion, neither organisms nor organizations evolve slowly and surely into something better, but drift until some small change occurs which has immediate and overwhelming significance. The special role of the human being is not to wait for these favorable accidents but deliberately to introduce the small change that will have great significance. — Edwin Land

I LOST MY OWN BOY, Treelore, right before I started waiting on Miss Leefolt. He was twenty-four years old. The best part of a person's life. It just wasn't enough time living in this world. He had him a little apartment over on Foley Street. Seeing a real nice girl name Frances and I spec they was gone get married, but he was slow bout things like that. Not cause he looking for something better, just cause he the thinking kind. Wore big glasses and reading all the time. He even start writing his own book, bout being a colored man living and working in Mississippi. — Kathryn Stockett

This is my new hobby. I watch my life depart minute by minute. I anticipate the end of everything and anything
a conversation, a class, track practice, darkness
only to be left with more clock-watching to take its place. I'm continually waiting for something better that never comes. Maybe it would help if I knew what I wanted. — Megan McCafferty

If God answers 'Yes', He is increasing your faith. If 'Wait', He is increasing your patience. If 'No', He has something better for you. — Nicky Gumbel

You can come out, and we will end it, cleanly, or you can die in there, of hunger and of fear. And when you are dead your circle will mean nothing, and we will tear out your heart and take your soul for a keepsake."
"P'raps it will be like that," I said, to the darkness and the shadows, "and p'raps it won't. And p'raps if it is, it would have been like that anyway. I don't care. I'm still going to wait here for Lettie Hempstock, and she's going to come back to me. And if I die here, then I will die waiting for her, and that's a better way to go than you and all you stupid horrible things tearing me to bits because I've got something inside me that I don't even want!" (Ocean at the End of the Lane) — Neil Gaiman

The numbing mind-ream of knowing you're alone not because people won't accept you but because you find so little worth accepting. An imposed solitude is better than simply tolerating your company in waiting for something better. So loneliness is not such a terrible thing when you consider that the alternative to thought provoking solace is to be surrounded only by remindings of why that solitude is preferable. — Jhonen Vasquez

You shouldn't waste your time," he further said. "Don't you see that to do any little thing you have to take an examination, you have to pay a fee and get a card or a diploma? You better get wise to this. If people don't know what you qualify in they'll never know where to place you, and that can be dangerous. You have to get in there and do something for yourself. Even if you're just waiting, you have to know what you're waiting for, you have to specialize. And don't wait too long or you'll be passed by. — Saul Bellow

Maybe they're not as mindless as we thought, or so dedicated to turning every last human into one of them. Like Kalyn says, they were just bored, waiting for something better to happen.
And that better thing is us. — Scott Westerfeld

He knew something was going to happen and his entire system was waiting on it. He thought it was going to be one of the supreme moments in life but apart from that, he didn't have the vaguest notion what it might be. He pictured himself, after it was over, as an entirely new man, with an even better personality than he had now. He sat there for about fifteen minutes and nothing happened. — Flannery O'Connor

An eternity of wisdom and life lies waiting for discovery by those who are willing to embark on the mystical adventure. All of our resources are within us. All we need is our heart, our mind and the will to be something better than we are. — Kim Chestney

Currently, it was leading him through a neighborhood that was on the downside of whatever curve you hoped you'd bought your property on the upside of. Graffiti and garbage were everywhere here. They were everywhere in the city, if it came to that, but elsewhere the garbage was better quality, and the graffiti was close to being correctly spelled. The whole area was waiting for something to happen, like a really bad fire. — Terry Pratchett

Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I'd move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I'd meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically - whether actually more realistic or not - I'd tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. — Haruki Murakami

I feel that there has to be a purpose to what we do. If there was no hope at all, we should just sleep or drink and wait for death. But we don't want to do that. And why? I think something tells us that we should struggle. We don't really know why we should struggle, but we do, because we think it's better than sitting down and waiting for calamity. — Chinua Achebe

Life is all about finding yourself through experiences, and about learning more and more about who you are and what you're capable of. If you're getting older and not succeeding in anything or doing anything to make a positive impact on people, then you're not living. You're just waiting for death. Get out there and make an impact on people, whether it's by helping them directly or by doing research to make their lives better or just by inspiring them. Do something good to be remembered for. This is more important than money. — Zak Bagans

Why would we have evolved this way? The most probable answer is that an organism that responds quickly to fast-changing social environments will more likely survive them. That organism won't have to wait around, as it were, for better genes to evolve on the species level. Immunologists discovered something similar twenty-five years ago: adapting to new pathogens the old-fashioned way - waiting for natural selection to favor genes that create resistance to specific pathogens - would happen too slowly to counter the rapidly changing pathogen environment. Instead, the immune system uses networks of genes that can respond quickly and flexibly to new threats. — Deborah Blum

Weir heard something different in the sounds. Once, during a period of calm, he sat on the firestep waiting for Stephen to return from an inspection and listened to the music of the tins. The empty ones were sonorous, the fuller ones provided an ascending scale. Those filled to the brim produced only a fat percussive beat unless they overbalanced, when the cascade would give a loud variation. Within earshot there were scores of tins in different states of fullness and with varying resonance. Then he heard the wire moving in the wind. It set up a moaning background noise that would occasionally gust into prominence, then lapse again to mere accompaniment. He had to work hard to discern, or perhaps imagine, a melody in this tin music, but it was better in his ears than the awful sound of shellfire. — Sebastian Faulks

P'raps it will be like that and p'raps it won't. And p'raps if it is, it would have been like that anyway. I don't care. I'm still going to wait here for Lettie Hempstock, and she's going to come back to me. And if I die here, then I still die waiting for her, and that's a better way to go than you and all you stupid horrible things tearing me to bits because I've got something inside me that I don't even want. — Neil Gaiman

The ones that change ... it's not that going actually changed them its that they didn't have something better waiting for them when they got back. They changed because its who they wanted to be. Not everyone is lucky enough to have the better half of his soul and the rest of his life waiting back home to remind him why he left in the first place. — Hope Alcocer

I don't know what's waiting for us when we die
something better, something worse. I only know I'm not ready to find out yet. — Charles De Lint

You know, you have to start with hope ... you don't get anywhere in this country without hope. So it's a necessity. What Barack says is that people have to understand hope isn't just blind optimism. It isn't passive. It isn't just sitting there waiting for things to get better. Hope is the vision that you have to have. It's the inspiration that moves people into action ... There are more people engaged in this political process in this year than we've seen in my lifetime. And it is all because of hope because people believe in the possibility of something unseen. — Michelle Obama

There is a sense that we are waiting for something, that however wonderful something is, there is something else waiting to tempt us; however perfect someone is, someone else might be better, more suitable, more fun, better in bed. Whatever road you chose you may just have easily chosen another. — Chloe Thurlow

If you blame others for something that happens in your life, then you must wait until they change in order to get better. — Wayne Dyer

He leaned forward and plucked something out of my hair. 'What - ?' He held the dead leaf before me.
'Must have gotten that rolling around with Alexi in the backyard.' I blinked and looked at him. 'That sounded so wrong.'
He nodded, eyebrow quirked. Waiting.
'I'm trying to learn a few things from your more experienced brother so I'm ready for our big event.'
His expression didn't change.
'Yee-ahhh. Not any better, huh?' I laughed. Our big event could mean two vastly different things to Pietr. 'Lemme just run through the other ways I could get this wrong: Alexi's teaching me some moves. He's trying to put the hurt on me. He was putting me into some positions I've never tried before ... I snorted. I couldn't help myself.
A muscle near Pietr's left eye twitched.
'He's teaching me to fight!' I laughed, grabbing his wrists. — Shannon Delany

By nature, I'm a person who always says that whatever I've done, I could've done better. But I don't dwell on it because I'm waiting for the next time something happens and try to believe that my past experience will have helped to educate me in terms of how I deal with future ones. — David Stern

I know that you're better off making your own products, not just waiting for someone to hand you something. — Michael Winslow

Don't waste your entire life always waiting for the end of the day, for the weekend, for summer, for things to
change, for something better. Enjoy as much of the present as you can. Now is happening. Now is good. Now belongs to you. — Emm Roy

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

If you are going to wait for someone to encourage you to do something, you just better give up. — Cher

These people, they were different to anyone I'd met. They'd offered their friendship, their trust, without a second thought. I'd always been wary about new people in my life. That same old barrier I put up to protect myself. I didn't let anyone close enough to be able to hurt me. My father had left, as though I was as insubstantial as air. As a child, I'd struggled to come to terms with it. He'd been there every single day, and then he wasn't. So what were we to him? A stopgap until something he determined as better came along? With the Aunt Margot feud, and subsequent alienation of the family, it felt as though people abandoned us like we were yesterday's newspaper. Could I fall into friendships with these girls, and then leave? Maybe it was time for me to stop worrying about anything other than living in the moment. I was missing out on so much, standing on the edge of life, waiting for something that might never happen. — Rebecca Raisin

For every wacky postcard, there's a million people waiting to buy it, and for every $10 million of those things, there's one Rembrandt. Purposely, I think I want to aim at doing something that a lot of people won't like. I'm just worried that it looks like I've compared my work with Rembrandt. "Gervais says he's better than Rembrandt!". — Ricky Gervais

Sometimes it feels like you have nothing, or aren't going anywhere, but while you're waiting for fortune to deliver you, there is always something you can do to help yourself, or teach yourself to better your situation. — A.J. Darkholme

Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflexion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come
— Samuel Beckett

We're all sinking in the same boat here. We're all bored and desperate and waiting for something to happen. Waiting for life to get better. Waiting for things to change. Waiting for that one person to finally notice us. We're all waiting. But we also need to realize that we all have the power to make those changes for ourselves. — Susane Colasanti

There's always another day, there's always a way to make up for the shit you've done and the people you've hurt, and there is always someone who loves you, even when you feel like you're completely alone and you're just out there floating along, waiting for the next disappointment. There is always something better to come. — Anna Todd

The way I view comedy clubs is, people are drinking, they're ordering food, they're out for the night, and there's also a person onstage talking. And with the theater, they came to the theater, and they're waiting to hear what you say. So you'd better have something to say. — Mike Birbiglia

For a moment, perhaps an hour, they would wait, wait for something, and when that waiting was over, it was simply dismissed, goodbyes stated, reading materials closed, a momentary pause in the day that did not hold up to whatever came next.
Waiting was often a resented gift, imparted to those who accepted it grudgingly in the hopes that something better would come along when the gift was tossed aside, boxed away for the next recipient. — Gina Marinello-Sweeney

He began to attack the bone with a regular knife and spoon. Until I nudged him with an elbow. "The marrow shovel." It was meant to reach down to the bottom of a bone and lift the marrow out. He reached for the utensil. "That's right. I always forget!" He wouldn't if Aunt had been his teacher. "Why do you think it is that we can't just use a knife?" I smothered a laugh as I remembered that I had asked Aunt that very same thing. "I don't know." "Neither do I. This table is a pigeon trap. A dozen different forks and knives and spoons. Four different goblets. All of them just waiting to be knocked over or misapplied and mishandled. It's a wonder anyone is ever tempted to eat!" "You're doing quite well." "Franklin's much better at all of this than I am." "But you're much better at conversing." "And making you laugh? Am I better at that?" I smiled. "Yes. I would say so." "Good. Because that, at least, is something worthwhile. — Siri Mitchell

Everything that enters our field of perception means something, large or small. Everything speaks to us, if we will take off our headphones and hear a different sound track. Everything corresponds. We travel better in the forest of symbols when we are open and available to all the forms of meaning that are watchingand waiting for us. — Robert Moss

I guess I'm hoping the weapons will make me feel better, grant me some kind of fucking control, especially if I sense the dullness inside me get too heavy and thick, warning me that something is again approaching, creeping slowly towards my room, no figment of my imagination either but as tangible as you and I, never ceasing to scratch, waiting, perhaps for a word or an order or some other kind of sign to at last initiate this violent and by now inevitable confrontation - always as full of wrath as I am full of fear. — Mark Z. Danielewski