Waiting Room Quotes

“Hospital waits are bad ones. The fact that they happen to pretty much all of us, sooner or later, doesn’t make them any less hideous. They’re always just a little too cold. It always smells just a little bit too sharp and clean. It’s always quiet, so quiet that you can hear the fluorescent lights - another constant, those lights - humming. Pretty much everyone else there is in the same bad predicament you are, and there isn’t much in the way of cheerful conversation. And there’s always a clock in sight. The clock has superpowers. It always seems to move too slowly. Look up at it and it will tell you the time. Look up an hour and a half later, and it will tell you two minutes have gone by. Yet it somehow simultaneously has the ability to remind you of how short life is, to make you acutely aware of how little time someone you love might have remaining to them.”
― Jim Butcher, Small Favor

“Let those who sit know that this world is not a waiting room; it is an arena to struggle, an arena for action! Let the inactive remember that we were born to act, not to sit!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“He had to wait in the sitting room for forty-five minutes. The room smelled of disinfectant and potpourri—he had the outlandish sensation he was in a medicinal Indian restaurant. During this time, he sat back in the corner, poised on the edge of his seat. It made the waiting easier if he leaned forward on his elbows with his hands between his legs as his knees drummed up and down. The other patients spread out through the room, each maximizing the distance to another human.”
― Scott Archer Jones

“. . . 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, The Rose and the Sword

“The Waiting Room by Stewart Stafford

The waiting room lay empty,
Gloom-prowled, leather-studded seats,
A ceiling fan spun lonely circles above,
Keeping no one in particular cool at all.

Portrait of a rose in a shadowy alcove,
A pair of empty street scenes framed,
Mirroring the deserted room where they hung,
Creating the vacuum of an infinity void.

A wreath of hope on the door,
The first patient of the day lumbers in,
Where there's one, there'll be others,
Smiles from all at the start of the day.

© Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford