Quotes About Anticipation

The day of the ball was spent preparing me much as one prepares a goose for Christmas, with the same ultimate effect.

It's the anticipation I can't handle. Loss lurks around every corner, and how do we prepare?

You know, you think about who you might meet and when they might come. You always know that someday a door will open and in will come the one you've waited for. And then the waiting is done. And the rest of your life can begin. And the minute I looked up and saw you there, I thought, There he is.

When I dreamed about the time you would actually sleep with me, I thought there'd be some sleeping involved.

I realized I'd been on pins and needles waiting to see how he'd react to being penned up again. I'll never understand that. How can I be on pins and needles and not even know it? It sounds like a thing that shouldn't exist in the world at all, but there it is. It's discouraging to be in the middle of a life that's impossible to explain.

gaping open, panting. It looked like a toothy smile.

As he sat down at the cool Formica table to eat his cereal, he heard Sadie, his curly-coated retriever, awake and ready to go, excited by the prospect of a light on in the house before sunrise. He sat listening to the periodic ringing of the chain-link of her kennel run as she jumped up and hit it with her front paws. Born and bred for just such a morning as this, Sadie recognized a good duck hunt at its first visible or audible indication.

Ruth said, "Ham told me once that the problem with people is that we forget that something unexpected can happen at any time.

the problem with people is that we forget that something unexpected can happen at any time.

10. Before he met Mrs. G,

people is that we forget that something unexpected can happen at any time.

Somehow Bea knew the key would have to be an utter lack of preparation. Of anticipation. Once she allowed space for doubt, she would never overcome it.

The way our subconscious tells us that if it never happened before, it never will. But if it happened, especially pretty recently, it tells us it's about to happen again.

out of it glided ladies in dresses that trailed along in a rustle of silk, men who swept their hats off with the same grandeur with which they swung their canes, liveried servants with impassive expressions, expectant drivers and porters bearing lighted candles.

I wish you the best that can be hoped for, and no worse than can be expected.

When a book lies unopened it might contain anything in the world, anything imaginable. It therefore, in that pregnant moment before opening, contains everything. Every possibility, both perfect and putrid. Surely such mysteries are the most enticing things...grant[ed] us in this mortal mere...Unknown and therefore infinite.

She said you'd come and I swore to eat your heart.

People are mostly happiest when they think they're just about to get the thing they want most. Before and after, they're all monsters.

all children are required to attend School, which is like a party to which everyone forgot to bring punch, or hats, or fiddles, and none of the games have good prizes.

But you can't ever imagine what you're going to care about when you turn into the version of you that's waiting on the other side of five years from now. That's a stranger waiting to ambush you, and all you can do is plant your feet and try not to get thrown.

Opium ain't got nothing on the promise of tomorrow turning up better than today.

have to wait. We can get married in a few weeks.

her footsteps on the stairs. I was expecting

My ninth-grade teacher told us that we would all fall in love with Catcher in the Rye. The elusive maroon cover added to its mystique. I kept waiting to fall in love with Salinger's cramped, desultory writing until I was annoyed.