Quotes & Sayings About What Are You Waiting For

Look at you. You're young. You're scared. Why are you so scared? Stop being paralyzed. Stop swallowing your words. Stop caring what other people think. Wear what you want. Say what you want. Listen to the music you want to listen to. Play it loud as fuck and dance to it. Go out for a drive at midnight and forget you have work the next day. Stop waiting for Friday. Live now. Do it now. Take risks. This life is yours. — Anonymous

We must become the person who is ready to accept the thing/s that we want. Sometimes, what you want is already waiting for you, alongside the person that you are capable of becoming. Alongside the destined you. So in between here and there, you have that journey, that process, of becoming that person. Wiser, stronger, gentler. We think that to attain what we want, means simply to achieve what we wish to attain. But if we could only see ourselves
our destined selves
already there in the future, standing hand-in-hand with our desires, we would always know that our worthy desires are objects that call us unto a higher calling, a higher state of existence. — C. JoyBell C.

Right now, I am in Fallujah. I am in Darfur. I am on Sixty-third and Park having dinner with Ellen Barkin and Ron Perelman ... Right now, I'm on Lafayette and Astor waiting to hit you up for change so I can get high. I'm taking a walk through the Rose Garden with George Bush. I'm helping Donald Rumsfeld get a good night's sleep ... I was in that cave with Osama, and on that plane with Mohamed Atta ... And what I want you to know is that your work has barely begun. And what I want you to trust is the efficacy of divine love if practiced consciously. And what I need you to believe is that if you hate who I love, you do not know me at all. And make no mistake, "Who I Love" is every last one. I am every last one. People ask of me: Where are you? Where are you? ... Verily I ask of you to ask yourself: Where are you? Where are you? — Stephen Adly Guirgis

What are you waiting for? How long will you keep waiting? Don't sit back and wait for life to happen to you. Have a plan and take the needed steps to create what you want. — Steve Maraboli

Despite what you've read, your sadness is not beautiful. No one will see you in the bookstore, curled up with your Bukowski, and want to save you.
Stop waiting for a salvation that will not come from the grey-eyed boy looking for an annotated copy of Shakespeare,
for an end to your sadness in Keats.
He coughed up his lungs at 25, and flowery words cannot conceal a life barely lived.
Your life is fragile, just beginning, teetering on the violent edge of the world.
Your sadness will bury you alive, and you are the only one who can shovel your way out with hardened hands and ragged fingernails, bleeding your despair into the unforgiving earth.
Darling, you see, no heroes are coming for you. Grab your sword, and don your own armor. — Emily Palermo

The vast majority of you are going to close this tab without, even for a single moment, entertaining the thought of writing something.

Step outside your comfort zone and try something new. Learning the fine rationalist art of CoZE (comfort zone expansion) is a really important life skill, and putting your writing online is a low-risk way to do that. Don't try to cop out with "I don't have any stories." Baloney. Everyone has stories; write up a memory that's important to you. And don't even try to tell me, "Oh, but I don't know how to write!" Neither did I when I started; I learned by doing. So please, set the excuses aside, put something up on the web, and share it with the rest of us. When you do, drop me a PM; I'll leave you your first review, but you have to publish something first.

Well? What are you waiting for? Seriously. Go write one sentence of a new story, write now. — David K. Storrs

Nick was waiting for him.
Gabriel hesitated. He wished those text messages had come with some kind of sign, whether Nick was pissed or exasperated or just completely done with him. Hell, a freaking emoticon would have been helpful.
His own room sat pitch-dark at the opposite end of the hallway. A black hole. Gabriel eased around the creaky spot in the floor and slid past his twin's room. Once in his own, he flung his duffel bag onto the ground and shut the door, closing the dark around himself. He sighed and kicked his shoes into the well of blackness under the bed. Maybe Nick hadn't heard him. Maybe he thought he was still out in the car.
"You are so predictable."
Gabriel swore and fumbled for the light switch.
Nick was straddling his desk chair backward, his arms folded on the backrest.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Gabriel snapped. "Why are you sitting here in the dark?"
His twin shrugged. Because I knew you'd walk right past my room. — Brigid Kemmerer

What's exciting about the Bay Area, is that people are not waiting for permission from the industry to make movies - unlike Los Angeles or New York, where you can get stuck into that desire of raising a big budget, or working with the studios. — Matthew Jacobs

if you wait around for the church, or someone else, to get something going, it may never happen. What are you waiting for? It's — Rod Dreher

Right now, and in every now-moment, you are either closing or opening. You are either stressfully waiting for something - more money, security, affection - or you are living from your deep heart, opening as the entire moment, and giving what you most deeply desire to give, without waiting. — David Deida

When a tardy bell rings again, normal is back. Kids rushing to class, sitting around bored, waiting for the final bell, and thinking about what they'll do that night, that weekend, that next fifty years. They'll be learning like we did about natural disasters and disease and world wars. You know: 'When the aliens came, seven billion people died,' and then the bell will ring and everybody will go to lunch and complain about the soggy Tater Tots. Like, 'Whoa, seven billion people, that's a lot. That's sad. Are you going to eat all those Tots? — Rick Yancey

She sighed heavily before whispering, "I'm still a bit confused as to what we are waiting for." "We are waiting for one of the constants in our world, Miss Braun," Wellington assured her. "At the end of every opera, there is the grand finale, where the music continues its gradual crescendo, the tenor and tempo rising ever so gradually for that pinnacle of dramatic tension, that moment of anticipation - " "Welly, are you talking about opera or about sex?" His next words caught in his throat. For a woman of higher tastes and seeming refinement, this woman could be utterly crass. — Philippa Ballantine

Mhisery took a deep breath, gave a small smirk along with a wink and said, "What are you waiting for? The South to rise again, fuck me! — Shyloh Morgan

Why are you doing this, Caleb?" "Doing what?" He was washing industriously under one arm. "Going to all the trouble to homestead and build a house when you have no intention of staying here." Caleb soaped the other armpit, then cordially handed the bar to Lily. "I can't leave you out here alone, can I?" he reasoned in pleasant tones. "I haven't resigned my commission yet, so I can't board a train for Pennsylvania either. I might as well do something constructive while I'm waiting for you to come to your senses." Lily — Linda Lael Miller

I shun all activities and you have none. You have freed yourself from all duties which had been forced on you. And so you need not know what time of the day or what time of the week, or numbers, reckoning of before and after, when and how far; in short you don't have to know the business of counting, which habit has made us human beings miserable in many ways. We have lost the faculty of appreciating the present living moment. We are always looking forward or backward and waiting for one or sighing for the other, and lose the pleasure of awareness of the moment in which we actually exist. — R.K. Narayan

I have a real aversion to machines. I write with a pen. Then I read it to someone who writes it onto the computer. What are those computer letters made of anyway? Light? Too insubstantial. Paper, you can feel it. A pen. There's a connection. A pen goes exactly at your speed, whereas that machine jumps. And then, that machine is waiting for you, just humming uh-huh, yes? — Fran Lebowitz

Well, it's like you're saving your energy for something. Holding back. But it doesn't make any sense. Life is one-way, and there is no return trip. What are you waiting for? — Penelope Douglas

All of us, you, your children, your neighbors and their children are everyday geniuses, even though the fact is unnoticed and unremembered by everyone. That's probably because school hasn't encouraged us to notice what's hidden inside us waiting for the right environment to express itself. — Peter Kline

He asked her, 'Why do you feel sorry for me, Old Woman?'
The Old Woman stood beside him and looked out the window at the Garden, so beautiful, flowering and everywhere illuminated by the rays of the setting sun, and said, 'I feel sorry for you, dear Youth, because I know where you are gazing and what you are waiting for. I feel sorry for you and your mother.'
Perhaps because of these words, or perhaps because of something else, there was a change in the Youth's mood. The Garden, flowering behind the high fence below his window, and exuding a wonderful fragrance, suddenly seemed somehow strange to him; and an ominous sensation, a sudden fear, gripped his heart with a violent palpitation, like heady and languid fragrances rising from brilliant flowers.
'What is happening?' he wondered in confusion.
("The Poison Garden") — Valery Bryusov

we have a plastic brain that changes in response to our experience. It bears repeating: The brain doesn't tell us what to do; it is part of a system in which our life experience teaches our brain what to do. So you can practice mindfulness, will power, overcoming procrastination, and other healthy new skills with the confidence that you are changing your brain. Each day's practice does some good, and if you slip and fall off your diet or exercise program or mindfulness practice, all that you have learned before is not undone; it's still there in your brain waiting for you to get back in the saddle. — Richard O'Connor

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

If you can't believe then you can't achieve and belief is intrinsic to every human; so what are you waiting for? Go ahead and get what you believe to achieve. — Mumtaz Kazmi

The way she sat now, leaning forward frowning, biting her pink bottom lip, her shirt dipping to reveal a hint of her cleavage ... He wondered idly if he could get her to bend over a little farther ...
"Just what are you staring at, exactly?"
Kadar snapped back to reality. "You. You've been thinking hard for the last five minutes. It's not good for you to strain your pretty little head like that. I'm waiting for the steam to shoot out of your ears to relieve the pressure on your brain."
"Aha." Audrey glanced at Jack and George. "What you have here is a man who was caught gaping at my breasts, and now he's trying to cover it up with rudeness. — Ilona Andrews

I asked you a question. What are you doing here?"
Resting his elbows on the side of the tub, he smiled lazily. She hated it when he smiled lazily. "Waiting for the bubbles to evaporate," he said. — Sandra Hill

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

Last Saturday night I was in a club on the South Side of Chicago listening to live rock music and talking to a guitar playing veteran of the music scene in the city. He looked and talked like the musicians that I recall from my childhood; he was a thin, cigarette smoking, avant garde and interesting guy. We got to talking about a life in the relatively risky creative arts and he said, "Look, you could get that safe job and spend your whole life that way, but what are you waiting for? When you're ninety-six years old and have three days left? Is that when you decide to do what you love? — Jamie Freveletti

I am so tired of waiting.
Aren't you,
for the world to become good
and beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
and cut the world in two
and see what worms are eating
at the rind. — Langston Hughes

Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?"
"Well [ ... ] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel."
"And when you have waited - -has it made you sure? — James Baldwin

The soul often hangs in a balance of some sort. Tonight do I lie down in the high fields with Dirk Tanner or not? At the fair, do I buy ribbons or wine? For the new ferry's headboard, do I use camphor or pearwood? Small things. A kiss, a ribbon, a grain that coaxes the knife this way or that. They are not, Kit Meinem of Atyar. Our souls wait for our answer because any answer changes us. This is why I wait to decide what I feel about your bridge. I'm waiting until I know how I will be changed."
"You never know how things will change you," Kit said.
"If you don't, you have not waited to find out. — Kij Johnson

Remember ...
Keystrokes are hammer taps. Get words on paper. Don't worry about connections, character or plot. Work for an hour. Promise yourself an hour. Do nothing else but move your fingers. Make coarse shapes. Follow any emotion that pops up but never impose emotion, never fake it, and don't make up your mind or your heart ahead of time. Understand you don't know what you're doing. That's why you're here. Rough it out. Anything goes. You can decide later what any piece of text looks like, what it might mean. Don't stop. Don't question. Don't quit. Don't stop to read what you wrote. Move your fingers. You mind will have no other option but to keep up. Remember that writer's block is merely the cold marble waiting for the chisel to heat up. — Bob Thurber

Pet, so far we've been playing at this. I'm going to take you a bit further. A play spanking can be erotic but I am going to take you flying, so high you'll never have felt anything like it." He paused and strolled around the kneeling boy. Damian pulled his hands together behind his back and linked the D rings on the cuffs. "Feel how helpless you are, on your knees to me, waiting for me to decide what to do to you? — Catt Ford

It's always the guy who gets the diarrhea on the commercial at an inconvenient moment. As if you've ever been in a situation: 'You know, this would be a great time to get the runs, you think? I mean the sun's out, we're on the ferris wheel - what are we waiting for? — Richard Jeni

Books; what a jolly company they are,
Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,
Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green
And every kind of colour. Which will you read?
Come on; O do read something; they're so wise.
I tell you all the wisdom of the world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence. — Siegfried Sassoon

Barak Obama said as much today talking about immigration. (imitating Obama) "I don't care what happens today. It is gonna happen. We are going to have comprehensive immigration reform. We're gonna have amnesty for these 11 or 12 million. It's gonna happen. You just wait." And that's the way they go about it. Defeat is not something that, in their minds, is lasting. — Rush Limbaugh

Our prayer must be, Father, I'm waiting for You because I know You are good in what You do and in when you do it. — James MacDonald

You get so used to being hit you find you're always waiting for it. ( ... ) How can I say what it feels like? I don't know. I know everybody's in trouble and nothing is easy, but how can I explain to you what it feels like to be black when I don't understand it and don't want to and spend all my time trying to forget it? I don't want to hate anybody - but now maybe, I can't love anybody either - are we friends? Can we really be friends? — James Baldwin

Norman picked up a sketch, glanced at it, then put it back down on the table. "I saw Bea Williamson this morning," he said in a low voice. "Lurking about looking for cut glass."
"Oh, of course," Mira said with a sigh. "Did she have it with her?"
Norman nodded solemnly. "Yep. I swear, I think it's almost gotten ... bigger."
Mira shook her head. "Not possible."
"I'm serious," Norman said. "It's way big."
I kept waiting for someone to expand on this, but since neither of them seemed about to, I asked, "What are you talking about?"
They looked at each other.
Then, Mira took a breath. "Bea Williamson's baby," she said quietly, as if someone could hear us, "has the biggest head you have ever seen."
Norman nodded, seconding this.
"A baby?" I said.
"A big-headed baby," Mira corrected me. "You should see the cranium on this kid. It's mind-boggling. — Sarah Dessen

Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing. Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out. You're curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off. There are so many adventures that you miss because you're waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go. — Randall Munroe

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

And then I have a secret. Did you know what will happen if you eliminate the empty spaces from the universe, eliminate the empty spaces in all the atoms? The universe will become as big as my fist.
Similarly, we have a lot of empty spaces in our lives. I call them interstices. Say you are coming over to my place. You are in an elevator and while you are coming up, I am waiting for you. This is an interstice, an empty space. I work in empty spaces. While waiting for your elevator to come up from the first to the third floor, I have already written an article! — Umberto Eco

The window rattles without you, you bastard. The trees are the cause, rattling in the wind, you jerk, the wind scraping those leaves and twigs against my window. They'll keep doing this, you terrible husband, and slowly wear away our entire apartment building. I know all these facts about you and there is no longer any use for them. What will I do with your license plate number, and where you hid the key outside so we'd never get locked out of this shaky building? What good does it do me, your pants size and the blue cheese preference for dressing? Who opens the door in the morning now, and takes the newspaper out of the plastic bag when it rains? I'll never get back all the hours I was nice to your parents. I nudge my cherry tomatoes to the side of the plate, bastard, but no one is waiting there with a fork to eat them. I miss you and I love you, bastard bastard bastard, come and clean the onion skins out of the crisper and trim back the tree so I can sleep at night. — Daniel Handler

Luce is different now. She's-" He could almost smell her.Clean, pure light, like sunshine. "Something fundamental has shifted.We finally have a real chance. And I-I have never been more elated ... nor more sick with terror." He opened his eyes and was surprised to see Daniil nod.
"Daniel?"
"Yes?"
"What are you waiting for?" Daniil asked with a smile. "Go get her."
And with that,Daniel teased open a shadow along the roof ledge-an Announcer-and stepped inside. — Lauren Kate

ANYWHERE COULD BE SOMEWHERE I might have come from the high country, or maybe the low country, I don't recall which. I might have come from the city, but what city in what country is beyond me. I might have come from the outskirts of a city from which others have come or maybe a city from which only I have come. Who's to know? Who's to decide if it rained or the sun was out? Who's to remember? They say things are happening at the border, but nobody knows which border. They talk of a hotel there, where it doesn't matter if you forgot your suitcase, another will be waiting, big enough, and just for you. — Mark Strand

Age makes you notice certain things. For example, I now know that a man's life is broadly divided into three periods. During the first, it doesn't even occur to us that one day we will grow old, we don't think that time passes or that from the day we are born we're all walking toward a common end. After the first years of youth comes the second period, in which a person becomes aware of the fragility of life and what begins like a simple niggling doubt rises inside you like a flood of uncertainties that will stay with you for the rest of your days. Finally, toward the end of life, the period of acceptance begins, and, consequently, of resignation, a time of waiting. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

So, I remember when I was a kid, I was waiting for my mom to come home when she was working late, and, you know, I was like, 'Oh my God, what happened to her? Is she OK? Did something happen to her getting in the car?' I was a little kid. But those are actually early onsets of anxiety. — Vinny Guadagnino

What are you waiting for, you little mortal! You have no time! Get up and get out and do something to protect your miraculous existence! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I will miss myself in relation to others. The rareness. The exceptional differences. I will miss the gift that comes with hardship and paying the price. I will miss the tragedy of my own life. As I once spoke...emphatically, but I now repeat here, quietly - the pain, the pain is what made it so God damn beautiful. I endured. You can wait a lifetime for thirty seconds, five minutes, or for an hour to come into your life - a brief interval that makes all the suffering purposeful. In such moments of splendor and rapture - even if the rapture be stilled, the private hours and years of reckoning are unloaded, a burden lifted and the spirit feels as it did on the happiest day of its life when it was young and untormented Or rather, unconscious of the torment waiting to be ignited. — Wheston Chancellor Grove

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

In reality, throughout your career, you have to make yourself interesting enough for people to be waiting to see your films. In my case, people are longing to see what I come out with next. That's my success. — Rani Mukerji

Angry grizzly bears are going to look tame next to what is waiting for you at home." I snapped the phone shut and placed it in her waiting hand. "I'm done. — Stephenie Meyer

Hey, I'm not a total idiot," said Nagasawa. "Of course life frightens me sometimes. I don't happen to take that as the premise for everything else, though. I'm going to give it a hundred percent and go as far as I can. I'll take what I want and leave what I don't want. That's how I intend to live my life, and if things go bad, I'll stop and reconsider at that point. If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit." "Sounds like a pretty self-centered way to live," I said. "Maybe so, but I'm not just looking up at the sky and waiting for the fruit to drop. In my own way, I'm working hard. I'm working ten times harder than you are." "That's probably true," I said. — Haruki Murakami

No; but you came, and found the riddles waiting for you! Indeed you are yourself the only riddle. What you call riddles are truths, and seem riddles because you are not true. — George MacDonald

They'll all be waiting. Waiting for me to fall.
So, come on , guys. I'm just one girl. No big hero, no protector of justice, not even a bona fide one-hundred-percent slayer. So what are you waiting for?
Take me on.
Hurt my world.
I dare you. — Joss Whedon

Fifty minutes, huh?" he muttered.
"Too long?" she managed with a teasing smile, knowing she longer had the strength to turn him away. She wanted Dalton to make love to her again. Needed him to.
He arched a brow. "You questioning my stamina?"
Laughing softly, she reached for his shirt, pulling him to her. "Not on your life. I know better. I was just thinking that for a man who spent years perfecting the eight second ride, fifty minutes might be quite a stretch."
Threading his fingers through her hair, he looked down at her. "The stretching part is no longer in question. Hell, much longer and it's gonna take a crow bar to get me out of these jeans."
"Then what are you waiting for? — Lindsey Brookes

What are you waiting for?" he screamed, launching himself at Liraz. With a neat step and parry she sent him face-first into the ground, and with one well-placed kick turned him over, gasping, onto his back. "Kill me!" he coughed out, lying there. "I know you want to!"
But she just shook her head and smiled, and Jael wanted to howl, because her smile had ... plans in it, and in those plans, he saw, there would be no easy death. — Laini Taylor

You only have one life, but if you live it well, that's enough. The only reality is now, today. What are you waiting for to be happy? — Isabel Allende

You never know when things are going to turn around. Things could turn around tomorrow. That's what I keep waiting for. If you left now, you'd never know. — Amy Kinzer

you must live in the world today as you wish everyone to live in the world to come. That can be your contribution. Otherwise, the world you want will never be formed. Why? Because you are waiting for others to do what you are not doing; and they are waiting for you, and so on. The planet goes from bad to worse. — Alice Walker

I have always been skeptical of medical orthodoxies, because sooner, rather than later, so many of them are turned on their heads. Or, put another way, providing you are prepared to wait it out, what was adjudged bad for you yesterday is likely to prove beneficial today. — Mordecai Richler

Oh shame, shame! Oh crying shame! How can we? Why do we allow ourselves? What are we doing? The last little room of dirt is waiting. Without windows. So for God's sake make a move, Henderson, put forth effort. You, too, will die of this pestilence. Death will annihilate you and nothing will remain, and there will be nothing left but junk ... While something still is
now! For the sake of all, get out! — Saul Bellow

I would encourage people that, if you are waiting for the end of 'The Office,' to re-tune in right away. It is the beginning of the end, where we start to break down what's going on with this documentary and see behind the scenes with who is involved. — Greg Daniels

So many times in life we try to protect what we value, but we are doubly blessed when we give it away. Have you given away your love today? Have you shared your faith? If not, what are you waiting for? — Tricia Goyer

If you will, for just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever." "You can't just decide to be happy." "No, you can't. But you can sure as hell decide to be miserable. Is that what you want? Do you want to be the asshole who went to Fillory and was miserable there? Even in Fillory? Because that's who you are right now." There — Lev Grossman

Are you waiting for the end of my story? It's ended. The day came when I was able to fly up here. I knew by then that I had much more to learn, and that I had to be stronger before I tried Crossing. But I felt I'd come more than halfway, too, and I was right. There was a corroded metal hatch over that window then. I tore it off and let it fall. When I'd explored all the rooms on all the levels, I decided to clean this one out and make it a private place just for myself, my own room in my own tower in the sky. There were bones in here and some other things, but I threw them out that window and swept this floor with my hands. When everything was tidy, I told myself I'd come back and spend hours up here after I'd made the Return Crossing, just thinking about who I was and what I had done for my children. But I never did, till now." "I'll — Gene Wolfe

And how do you explain to your wife that you don't have all the answers, and that you might not know what you are doing, and that you are afraid you are going to fail? How do you admit that you are most afraid that, one day, she'll walk - and replace you with an educated, professor-type guy, who shares her same interests, schedule, and the way she was used to living, especially when all of your friends, your business associates, even your own damned brother, are all just waiting for you to mess up so they can have a shot at taking her away from you? How do you look the woman you love in her eyes and tell her that? — Leslie Esdaile

Up or down, it seemed to us that we were always going toward something terrible that had existed before us yet had always been waiting for us, just for us. When you haven't been in the world long, it's hard to comprehend what disasters are at the origin of a sense of disaster: maybe you don't even feel the need to. Adults, waiting for tomorrow, move in a present behind which is yesterday or the day before yesterday or at most last week: they don't want to think about the rest. Children don't know the meaning of yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this is the night. — Elena Ferrante

The hours are slow in passing as they always are when you are waiting in fear for you know not what: I am reminded of the moments before the coming of a cyclone, when you have barricaded yourself into your dwelling and have nothing else to do but wait. The moments will not pass, the air hangs still and heavy; it is as though time itself has been slowed by the friction of fear. — Amitav Ghosh

I get so excited when I hear people saying their greater is coming. After all, I'm always telling everyone to find the positive. Yes, your greater is coming, but what are you doing to prepare for it? Are you putting in more time/hours? Are you getting professional help? Are you studying? Are you praying? Are you making room? Are you saving? Are you making positive changes? Or are you just sitting back waiting for this greater? Greater can only be achieved by faith AND works. — J'son M. Lee

He places the skull in the palm of my hand. There are four canines; the top two are so long and curved I can feel them pricking my skin. There's a green tinge round the eye socket and in a fine line across the cranium. I'm not sure what animal it's from.
'Stoat,' Harris says, as if I've spoken out loud. 'They hunt grouse and partridge. I found it behind my house. I buried the body in the furze until it was just bone.'
His hand is still beneath mine, supporting it. I think of him seeing the small dead creature and digging a tiny grave for it. Planning ahead for all those months just so he'd see the skeleton. Or maybe he severed the animal's head and that was the only part he buried.
'It's been waiting for you all this time. Like I have. — Sanjida Kay

Take your clothes off."
"What?"
"You heard me."
Evelyn forced her mouth shut.
She looked around the room, buying time. The faded brown curtains hung limply over the windows, not quite touching, and the afternoon light filtered through the gaps, its beams turning the dust in the air into diamonds. She could hear the rattle of a wagon on the street below and the regular rhythm of squeaking bedsprings in the adjacent room.
"So? What are you waiting for?"
She stared at the man on the moth eaten chaise longue in front of her. He was serious. — Molly Ann Wishlade

In life, we are all on the same journey, we are all struggling to get from point A to point B. Different people have different point A originations and B destinations, but the path we travel is the same. If you can take what you have learned; share the experience and shortcuts you've discovered along the way, offer time saving tips and how you finally made it - then you can lighten the load of those who are just beginning on a similar path. Getting paid for it is an added bonus. My hope is that you do not end your journey at "I wrote a book" but rather understand that your book is just the beginning. Imagine the products you can create based on the contents of your book. Imagine the opportunities to share your knowledge with more people by speaking, training, coaching. You have an important message to share and the world is waiting ... — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

This could be the last time I have to wait. But I don't know what I'm waiting for. What are you waiting for? they used to say. That meant Hurry up. No answer was expected. For what are you waiting is a different question, and I have no answer for that one either. — Margaret Atwood

She hesitated: "Do you love your wife?"
Mersault smiled: "That's not essential."
"You make the mistake of thinking you have to choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for happiness. What matters - all that matters, really - is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever present consciousness. The rest - women, art, success - is nothing but excuses. A canvas waiting for our embroideries."
"What matters to me is a certain quality of happiness. I can only find it in a certain struggle with its opposite - a stubborn and violent struggle ... — Albert Camus

There is nothing to be gained by waiting for a better situation. You see where you are and you do what you can with that. — Jacob K. Javits

It's moments like these that you wait for not knowing what you
are waiting for, but when they come . . . you know that this is
something you could have waited your life for ! — Durjoy Dutta

Often the most tricky questions are the ones we secretly know the answers of.
What are you running from?
What are you waiting for? — Sanhita Baruah

You want to understand are they needing you or not??
Are they with you or not??
Do they feel what you to make them better or not..
Wow these are a lot of questions, I just don't know from where to start...
Okay..., just stop doing that, stop being part of them, just remove them from social and non social live for a time... and keep waiting you could give some kind a information about where you will be or not and wait you will see everything. — Deyth Banger

Don't you want to know my name?" he asked, grabbing the ketchup bottle without taking his eyes off of me.
"Sure. What's your name?"
"You don't sound genuinely interested."
"I'm not begging if that's what you're waiting for."
Throwing his head back, he let out a deep rolling laugh before focusing his dark gaze on me again. "I wouldn't mind seeing you beg," he said then added when I frowned, "Cooper."
"Anyone ever call you Coop the Poop or Poopy Coopy?" I asked, messing with him because his iron stare made me nervous.
"No," he muttered.
"Not to your face anyway."
A smile lifted the corner of his mouth and his gaze softened. "No, not to my face."
"I guess there are benefits to being scary. — Bijou Hunter

What does a woman do as she waits for her man? She may wash her hair, put on makeup, choose the kind of outfit any woman would be eager to try on, spray on perfume, and look at herself one last time in the mirror. If she does these things, it's when she and the man she's waiting for are in love. It's different when a woman waits for a man she still loves but who has broken up with her, because the pure joy of it is missing. Loving someone is like carving words into the back of your hand. Even if the others can't see the words, they, like glowing letters, stand out in the eyes of the person who's left you. Right now, that's enough for me. — Kyung-ran Jo

So what's the big emergency?" Jeffrey says. He jogs down the aisle of the Pink Garter toward where Christian and I are sitting, waiting for Angela, who uncharacteristically late. "I thought we weren't going to meet this week because we like, you know, spent all weekend together. I'm kind of sick of you people."
"Glad to see that you decided to grace us with your presence, anyway," Christian says. — Cynthia Hand

He suddenly leaned in, and his fingers brushed my cheek. Warmth flooded my skin, and I frozen, waiting for him to pull back.
He didnt. The tips of his fingers lingered on my cheek for a moment. Then, very slowly, his hand slipped forward, the palm brushing my skin. Frozen, I stared at him, watching his face as his fingers moved from my cheek to my forehead to my chin, like a blind man tracing someone's features to see them in his mind.
"What are you doing to me?" he whispered. — Julie Kagawa

What are you waiting for, Ryan? Suck it already. — Sarina Bowen

God is a wise husbandman, who waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it (James 5:7). He cannot gather the fruit until it is ripe. He knows when we are spiritually ready to receive the blessing to our profit and His glory. Waiting in the sunshine of His love is what will ripen the soul for His blessing. Waiting under the cloud of trial, that breaks in showers of blessing, is as necessary. Be assured that if God waits longer than you could wish, it is only to make the blessing doubly precious. God waited four thousand years, until the fullness of time, before He sent His Son. Our times are in His hands. He will avenge His elect speedily. He will make haste for our help and not delay one hour too long. — Andrew Murray

A couple months after school started that year, I just plain stopped going to see the Maje. I remember coming home one day and checking the answering machine in my bedroom. The first message was from the Maje. He was waiting for me to come over. He sounded feeble and desperate: "Steve, where are you? I need you? Are you coming? Please . . ." I deleted it. The next message was also from the Maje and said pretty much the same thing. Delete. There must have been a dozen messages on that machine from the Maje, all begging me, pleading with me, to come help him. I deleted every single one of them. To this day, I have no idea what happened to the Maje, no idea if he ever got that cataract surgery. That's how our relationship ended. It still makes me feel horrible to think about now: I just deleted the Maje. — Stephen "Steve-O" Glover

What did he have to mope about, really? What more did he want? ... Love. Purpose. Those are the things that you can't plan for. Those are the things that just happen. And what if they don't happen? Do you spend your whole life pining for them? Waiting to be happy? — Rainbow Rowell

Come then, come with us, out into the night. Come now, America the lovesick, America the timid, the blessed, the educated, come stalk the dark backroads and stand outside the bright houses, calm as murderers in the yard, quiet as deer. Come, you slumberers, you lumps, arise from your legion of sleep and fly. Come, all you dreamers, all you zombies, all you monsters. What are you doing anyway, paying the bills, washing the dishes, waiting for the doorbell? Come on, take your keys, leave the bowl of candy on the porch, put on the suffocating mask of someone else and breathe. Be someone you don't love so much, for once. Listen: like the children, we only have one night. — Stewart O'Nan

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

Stay down if you know what's good for you." Colin said. He put his foot on the man's neck and applied a little weight.
The man coughed into the dirt. "Who...who are you?"
Who am I?" Colin replied. He had been waiting for this moment. "I'm the the one bogeyman is afraid of. I'm the new face of justice. I'm your worst nightmare."
He crouched down, leaning closer to the man. "You'd better warn the rest of your low-life friends that there's a new hero in town. You and your kind wont be tolerated any longer."
Colin stood up and folded his arms. He wished there was a breeze that would make his cape fly a little. "Who am I? I am Titan."
And that was when one of the other muggers hit Colin across the back of his head with a plank of wood. — Michael Carroll

Do me a favor," he whispers, curling my fingers over the back of his and bringing them to his mouth. "What?" His eyes never leave mine as he brushes his lips over my knuckles. "Dream of me tonight," he says softly. He watches me, waiting for a response. I have no words, so I simply nod. He doesn't need to know that no one else occupies my dreams. No one. "Dream of my lips, teasing you." Straightening one of my fingers, he kisses the tip. His voice is like velvet and his words are like an aphrodisiac. "Dream of my tongue, tasting you." His tongue sneaks out to flick the end of my finger. A surge of desire rocks my core. "And I'll dream of you. Of what it feels like to be inside your warm, wet body. — M. Leighton

Questions are for the benefit of every student, not just the one raising his hand. If you don't have the starch to stand up in class and admit what you don't understand, then I don't have the time to explain it to you. If you don't have a policy against nonsense you can wind up with a dozen timid little rabbits lined up in the hall outside your office, all waiting to whisper the same imbecilic question in your ear. — Ann Patchett

What I have always found most comforting about these forms is the trace of hope I get as I'm filling them out. How they break your life down into such tidy realms, making each seem tractable, because discrete, in a way they never are beyond the white noise of the waiting room. You get that fleeting sense that you're on the verge of being understood, truly and fully, and for the first time, if you could just get it all down in black and white before the receptionist calls your name. — Adam Haslett

What are you waiting for in order to give up? — Emile M. Cioran

STOP talking about your dreams and just go out and live them. Life is way too short ... what are you waiting for? — Timothy Pina

If you always dreamed of writing a novel or a memoir, and you used to love to write, and were pretty good at it, will it break your heart if it turns out you never got around to it? If you wake up one day at eighty, will you feel nonchalant that something always took precedence over a daily commitment to discovering your creative spirit? If not
if this very thought fills you with regret
then what are you waiting for? — Anne Lamott

You want a great life? Well, greatness is on the other side of that f***ing wall ... don't just go over it, go through it! What are you waiting for? — Steve Maraboli

Most fears are basic: fear of the dark, fear of going down in the basement, fear of weird sounds, fear that somebody is waiting for you in your closet. Those kinds of things stay with you no matter what age. — R.L. Stine

When he touches you like you are the last person he will ever touch. When he runs you through his fingers with every bit of tenderness he can flesh out of his bones. When he says your name like tidal waves and kisses you like a midnight in July. Hold him close, project your thanks to the heavens, and find what you've been waiting for in the closeness of your skin. — Key Ballah

Afterwards
Mostly you look back and say, "Well, OK. Things might have been different, sure, and it's not too bad, but look - things happen like that, and you did what you could."
You go back and pick up the pieces. There's tomorrow. There's that long bend in the river on the way home. Fluffy bursts of milkweed are floating through shafts of sunlight or disappearing where trees reach out from their deep dark roots.
Maybe people have to go in and out of shadows till they learn that floating, that immensity waiting to receive whatever arrives with trust. Maybe somebody has to explore what happens when one of us wanders over near the edge and falls for awhile. Maybe it was your turn. — William Stafford

Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you'll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school textbooks (no boy remembers his schooling like the one who was taken out of school, let me assure you), sentences about politics read in a newspaper while waiting for someone to come to an office, triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All India Radio news bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like lizards from the ceiling, in the half hour before falling asleep
all these ideas, half formed and half digested and half correct, mix up with other half-cooked ideas in your head, and I guess these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with. — Aravind Adiga

Have you not seen it? Whenever you choose happiness, you become the victim of unhappiness; whenever you want success, failure comes in; whenever you hope, frustration is waiting for you; whenever you cling to life, death comes and destroys. Have you not seen it happen every day, every moment? These are not opposites, they are together. When one sees them together, then what is there to choose? There is nothing to choose, one becomes choiceless. — Osho