Quotes & Sayings About Waiting Too Long For Something

That boulder did what it was there to do. Boulders fall. That's their nature. It did the only natural thing it could do. It was set up, but it was waiting for you. Without you coming along and pulling it, it would still be stuck where it had been for who knows how long. You did this, Aron. You created it. You chose to come here today; you chose to do this descent into the slot canyon by yourself. You chose not to tell anyone where you were going. You chose to turn away from the women who were there to keep you from getting in this trouble. You created this accident. You wanted it to be like this. You have been heading for this situation for a long time. Look how far you came to find this spot. It's not that you're getting what you deserve - you're getting what you wanted. — Aron Ralston

If I talk about the bad old days of crystal meth for too long, I start getting like, "Oh ... speed ... that was delicious ... " But in general, I don't so much. Or wait - maybe the recklessness just occurs in a different sphere so it doesn't look like bottoming out. But really - isn't trying to have a baby sort of a reckless thing to do? — Michelle Tea

My mouth drops when she slides his hoodie off and pushes her fingers into his dark locks that are cut short on the sides, but left longer on top. Not too long, just enough to grab a hold of. I've been waiting months and she's known him for thirty-seconds and is already touching him. He says something to her causing her to nod as he takes her hand and leads them off the dance floor. "Where's he going?" I ask again. — Heidi McLaughlin

In the deep jungles of Africa, a traveler was making a long trek. Coolies had been engaged from a tribe to carry the loads. The first day they marched rapidly and went far. The traveler had high hopes of a speedy journey. But the second morning these jungle tribesmen refused to move. For some strange reason they just sat and rested. On inquiry as to the reason for this strange behavior, the traveler was informed that they had gone too fast the first day, and that they were now waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies. — Lettie Cowman

You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place ... — Dr. Seuss

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

There are always more questions. Science as a process is never complete. It is not a foot race, with a finish line ... People will always be waiting at a particular finish line: journalists with their cameras, impatient crowds eager to call the race, astounded to see the scientists approach, pass the mark, and keep running. It's a common misunderstanding, he said. They conclude there was no race. As long as we won't commit to knowing everything, the presumption is we know nothing. — Barbara Kingsolver

When I walk into a room, you'd think I was one of those long, straight Tetris pieces because everyone's just like, Oh great, you're here! We've been waiting for you to show up. — Bo Burnham

Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow? — Audrey Niffenegger

Something new is blowing. On a downtown Kingston wall: IMF - Is Manley Fault. General election called for October 30, 1980. Somebody is driving you through Bavaria, near the Austrian border. A hospital sprouting out of the forest like magic. Hills in the background tipped with snow like cake icing. You meet the tall and frosty Bavarian, the man who helps the hopeless. He smiles but his eyes are set too far back and they vanish in the shadow of his brow. Cancer is a red alert that the whole body is in danger, he says. Thank God the food he forbids, Rastafari had forbidden long time. A sunrise is a promise. Something new is blowing. November 1980. A new party wins the general election and the man who killed me steps up to the podium with his brothers to take over the country. He has been waiting for so long he leaps up the stairs and trips. — Marlon James

It is difficult to enjoy people for whom we have waited too long. And in this familiar situation, which evokes such intensities of feeling, we wait and we try to do something other than waiting, and we often get bored - the boredom of protest that is always a screen for rage. — Adam Phillips

He was a lawyer now and it had taken him a long time. It had taken him a long time because he had had to be a lawyer on his own terms and in his own way. But that was over. But maybe it had taken him too long. If something takes too long, something happens to you. You become all and only the thing you want and nothing else, for you have paid too much for it, too much in wanting and too much in waiting and too much in getting. In the end they just ask you those crappy little questions. — Robert Penn Warren

Liz pasted on a smile, trying to appear normal in light of the fact that he had possibly incriminating knowledge on her from the background check. She hoped her application for a marriage license with Craig wasn't in the report. Or her long shopping record for organization systems from The Container Store. Or her many Internet searches for breeds of nonshedding dogs (she was waiting for the house with a yard before getting one). Or her long-time obsession with new cleaning products. — Kylie Gilmore

Waiting and hoping is a hard thing to do when you've already been waiting and hoping for almost as long as you can bear it. — Jenny Nimmo

What is enthusiasm but a passionate belief in what seems to be a high and holy aim, - an unselfish devotion to some noble cause, - a consecration of heart and mind and soul to the attainment of a great object? What is it but an earnest effort to attain the heights of spiritual and intellectual endeavor? What is it but the life, the force, the power, which makes individuals or nations capable of enduring much and waiting long, in the conviction that ultimately the thing they have at heart will be accomplished? — Orison Swett Marden

If something takes too long, something happens to you. You become all and only the thing you want and nothing else, for you have paid too much for it, too much in wanting and too much in waiting and too much in getting. — Robert Penn Warren

I've been waiting for this a long time."-Martin "Let me guess that you're wishing for your IQ to break double figures?"- Alex V. — Benedict Jacka

How can we who are so weak in ourselves, so inferior in power to the enemies confronting us, bear up under our trials which are so numerous, so protracted, so crushing? We could not, and therefore Divine grace has provided for us an all-sufficient Helper. Without His aid we had long since succumbed, mastered by our trials. Hope looks forward to the Glory to come; in the weary interval of waiting, the Spirit supports our poor hearts and keeps grace alive within us. — Arthur W. Pink

So the criminals win, that's what you're saying? For now they do. But it's a long game, Jamison. And I always play for the long game. — David Baldacci

I saw something last night-a flash of power from an unexpected source. I can't jump to conclusions - I've been looking and waiting and watching for too long to make a mistake. But in my guy I feel she's here. She's here and she has power. I need to get closer to her. — Cate Tiernan

I tried to keep things light. I said: Would you believe, this thing here where your arm bends, this they call an elbow. I said: Two rabbis diverged in a yellow wood. I said: Moshe goes to the doctor. Doctor, he says, etcetera, etcetera. Many things I did not say. Example. I waited so long. Other example. And were you happy? With that nebbish that clod that numbskull schlemiel you call a husband? The truth was I'd given up waiting long ago. The moment had passed, the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we led had shut in our faces. — Nicole Krauss

In my view it is time to pass a good bill, a fair bill, a comprehensive bill ... Too many have been waiting too long for fairness. — Patrick Leahy

Ten minutes can be a long time when you're waiting with a beating heart for something you don't understand, something you don't really want to know. — Cornelia Funke

It was kind of a beautiful day, finally real summer in Indianapolis, warm and humid - the kind of weather that reminds you after a long winter that while the world wasn't built for humans, we were built for the world. Dad was waiting for us, wearing a tan suit, standing in a handicapped parking spot typing away on his handheld. He waved as we parked and then hugged me. "What a day," he said. "If we lived in California, they'd all be like this. — John Green

I went outside. Tried taking in the billions of stars above, lingering long enough to allow each point of light the chance to scratch a deep hole in the back of my retina, so that when I finally did turn to face the dark surrounding forest I thought I saw the billion eyes of a billion cats blinking out, in the math of the living, the sum of the universe, the stories of history , a life older than anyone could have ever imagined. And even after they were gone
fading away together, as if they really were one
something still lingered in those sweet folds of black pine , sitting quietly, almost as if it too were waiting for something to wake. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I'm right here," he said. "Dad's right here. I'm going nowhere. Just gonna wait until you're ready to come out into the world, and then your mom and I are going to take care of you. So you hang tight, we
clear? Do your thing, and we'll wait for however long it takes."
With his free hand, he took Layla's palm, and put it over his own.
"Your family is right here. Waiting for you ... and we love you."
It was totally stupid to talk to what was, no doubt, nothing but a bundle of cells. But he couldn't help
it. The words, the actions ... they were at once totally his, and yet coming from a place that was foreign to him.
Felt right, though.
Felt ... like what a father was supposed to do. — J.R. Ward

Making a movie is a long, dull process. There's a lot of waiting around. — Julia Louis-Dreyfus

[God] is waiting and anxious to pour out blessings, and glory, and honor, and exaltation upon his people, far more than we have ever received, and far more than we are capable of receiving; and the only reason we have not received it long ago is because there was no place found for it. — Erastus Snow

And I'm just saying that by the end of these seven days or maybe a week from then, or a month, you'll say yes." He cupped my cheek and leaned inm pressing his forehead to mine. "And I'll be waiting. No matter how long it takes. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

running to and fro with trays of refreshments. Odo, who knew that his mother lived in the Duke's palace, had vaguely imagined that his father's death must have plunged its huge precincts into silence and mourning; but as he followed the abate up successive flights of stairs and down long corridors full of shadow he heard a sound of dance music below and caught the flash of girandoles through the antechamber doors. The thought that his father's death had made no difference to any one in the palace was to the child so much more astonishing than any of the other impressions crowding his brain, that these were scarcely felt, and he passed as in a dream through rooms where servants were quarrelling over cards and waiting-women rummaged in wardrobes full of perfumed finery, to a bedchamber in which a lady dressed in weeds sat disconsolately at supper. "Mamma! Mamma!" he cried, springing — Edith Wharton

Since then, I have realized that my tree had been a child once too. The embryo that became my tree sat on the ground for years, caught between the danger of waiting too long and the danger of leaving the seed too early. — Hope Jahren

You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the birth, for the the hour of the new clarity. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is fantastic. It's volcanic and sexy and utterly unlike anything I've read before. It feels like the future in a dazzling way that has nothing to do with looking backward. It's been a long wait for a new novel from Mark Leyner, but worth it. Ten out of ten from me. — Douglas Coupland

One of the things he wanted to start screaming about was the surgeon's knife that was almost certain to be waiting for him and everyone else who lived long enough to die. — Joseph Heller

I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again. — Sylvia Plath

I'm pre-med," he added smugly.
"Okay." I said again. I didn't shrug this time, but his jaw tightened a bit as if he was annoyed that I wasn't displaying the proper amazement at his accomplishment.
"And I'm next in line to be promoted to death investigator." The look he gave me was nothing short of a challenge, and I had to fight to not roll my eyes. What, he expected me to start crowing about my own accomplishments so he could top them? He'd be waiting a long time for that. — Diana Rowland

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

People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for a bus. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it took them to get a visa. I'm not interested in the boring parts. Everyone has tummy trouble. Everyone waits in line. I don't want to hear about it. — Paul Theroux

You told me you wanted time. I've given it to you, and I'll give you as long as you need, McKenzie. I love you." He tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear. "You're worth waiting a decade for. — Sandy Williams

For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love; the passionate search for truth other than our own. With longing; the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. — Gregory David Roberts

If I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write about it but rather to keep on learning about it always and at no time, unless you are very egotistical, which, of course, accounts for many books, will you be able to say: now I know all about this and will write about it. — Ernest Hemingway,

But in the garden the sun still shone. The innumerable bees hummed. The scent of thyme hung on the air. But only the Natterjack was there to breathe the fragrant essence of it. He and the garden were waiting. They were waiting for more children. They didn't care how long they waited. They had all the time in the world. -The Time Garden, Edward Eager — Edward Eager

For as long as I could remember, a part of me had been waiting for the day it would happen; with the cunning that comes to people whose minds have been stripped to one desire, she picked the only day we weren't waiting for. — Tana French

48-point type, a letter size that big-city newspapers probably reserve for special occasions such as Armageddon. Out here in the heartland, we are not waiting that long. Our local paper's stance on the great big headline letters is: You got 'em, you use 'em. — Barbara Kingsolver

You can only get next to God through the effort of preparation. To experience the uncreated, the state of awareness will have to be held for several minutes. You are then between time and the time-less - waiting for the unknown, which will come but cannot be willed. — Barry Long

Driving in Olathe was likewise an exercise in patience. Going anywhere often involved waiting at railroad crossings as a long freight train passed. David — Marek Fuchs