Quotes About Patience

I couldn't bear to think about the proper future, so I just tried to make things better for the next twenty minutes or so, over and over again.

Ho da poco scoperto che la mia amica Mary, quando finisce un libro, fa passare qualche giorno prima di cominciarne un altro - vuole dare all'ultima lettura un po' più di respiro, prima che venga soffocata dalla prossima. È una cosa sensata, e mi sembra una linea di comportamento assolutamente lodevole. Noi che leggiamo nevroticamente, tuttavia - per scongiurare la noia e il timore dell'ignoranza e della nostra morte imminente - non possiamo permetterci di farlo.

If he'd known how long he was going to spend in the airport lounge of his own life, he'd have made different travel arrangements..

The annoying thing about reading is that you can never get the job done.

He was hoping that when this was all over, his spiritual overdraft would have been paid off, and he'd be allowed to use the cash machine again.

If he'd known how long he was going to spend in the airport lounge of his own life, he'd have made different travel arrangements

It was like there had been a lot of food on a plate in front of us, and we ate it all really quickly, and then there was nothing left. Maybe that's how couples stay together: they're not greedy. They know what they have in front of them has to last a long time, so they kind of pick at it. I hope it's not like that, though. I hope that when people are happy together, it feels as though someone keeps piling seconds and thirds on their plates.

They were all waiting for a man. Men were going to scoop them up in a net and take them home and put them into an even smaller tank. Not all of them were waiting to find a man, because some of them had already found one, but it didn't stop the waiting. A few were waiting for a man to make up his mind and fewer still, the lucky ones, were waiting for a man who'd already made up his mind to make enough money. Barbara

Several months later, and I have finally read one of the three, even though I wanted to read all three of them immediately. (What happened in between? Other books, is what happened. Other books, other moods, other obligations, other appetites, other reading journeys.)

Más aún que eso, estaba como de costumbre a la espera de que el Arsenal me enseñase que las cosas no siempre van a peor, que las malas rachas terminan tarde o temprano, que se puede cambiar de hábitos, que no es posible perder muchos partidos seguidos.

Annie, meanwhile, was still trying to twist her mouth into a polite smile. It would take her five minutes to complete the smile, and probably another twenty-four hours to produce an accompanying snappy verbal response.

Era un po' come se avessimo avuto davanti a noi un piatto strapieno e avessimo mangiato tutto in un lampo, e non era avanzato niente. Forse è così che le coppie resistono: evitando di abbuffarsi. Sanno che quel che hanno davanti deve durare a lungo, così lo centellinano. Anche se spero che la ragione non sia questa. Spero che, quando due persone stanno bene insieme, sia come se qualcuno continuasse a riempirgli il piatto.

You can wait forever for the muse to sit on your shoulder, but most of the time you know what has to be done.

Sebastian stretched. Clara stared. She could not help it. He was still in his breeches and shirt and she was riveted by the deliciously tight fit of the buckskins over his thighs. You could avert your eyes, Sebastian said mildly. I could, Clara agreed, but I am not going to. He smiled. Hussy. I know. But I have waited a long time--

No one but her uncle knew that under Fursey's tutelage she could make her letters or that she understood Latin if it was spoken slowly—and even he seemed content to let her learn privately. Until she knew how these newcomers thought and what they wanted, she would keep it that way, keep her dice rattling in her cup. It was foolish to throw before all bets were on the table.

Lore, if you wait for the right moment, you'll wait forever.

Motherhood makes multiple personalities look normal and necessary.

The shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed, or, worse, go unread. Instead she let it sit where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it.

All my life I have arrived early only to find myself standing self-consciously on a corner, outside a door, in an empty room, but the closer I get to death the earlier I arrive, the longer I am content to wait, perhaps to give myself the false sensation that there is too much time rather than not enough.

Sometimes I forget that the world is not on the same schedule as I. That everything is not dying, or that if it is dying it will return to life, what with a little sun and the usual encouragement. Sometimes I think: I am older than this tree, older than this bench, older than the rain. And yet. I'm not older than the rain. It's been falling for years and after I go it will keep on falling.

How you fall in love and it's there that the work begins: day after day, year after year, you must dig yourself up, exhume the contents of your mind and soul for the other to sift through so that you might be known to him, and you, too, must spend days and years wading through all that he excavates for you alone, the archaeology of his being, how exhausting it became, the digging up and the wading through, while my own work, my true work, lay waiting for me.

I knew how to raise my own child, what did he think it was, a game of Scrabble or Monopoly, there are no rules, was she so blind that she couldn't see that all that mental midget had done was turn her into a nervous wreck, full of doubt about something that had come naturally to her from the beginning, something any idiot could see, which was that she was a wonderful mother, full of love and patience?

If we confine ourselves to waiting, we will not get the 'great day' at all, but rather the tanks in the small hours of the morning.

Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it is still too young—so have patience with it!