"You usually have to wait for that which is worth waiting for"
About this Quote
Patience is framed here less as a virtue than as a toll: if you want the good thing, you pay in time. Craig Bruce’s line has the clipped, streetwise pragmatism of a thriller writer - a reminder that desire is rarely rewarded on demand, and that impatience is often just a way of announcing you’re not ready for what you’re asking for.
The phrasing does a lot of sly work. “Usually” keeps it honest, resisting the motivational-poster lie that waiting always pays off. Sometimes you wait and get nothing; sometimes you get lucky fast. Bruce is describing a pattern, not a promise. “Have to” adds pressure: the wait isn’t optional, it’s built into the structure of anything “worth” having. That word, “worth,” is the moral engine of the quote. It implies a market of value where time is the proof of seriousness, and where quick gratification carries an odor of cheapness.
Subtextually, it’s also about control. Waiting forces you to confront how little you can brute-force outcomes - relationships, mastery, trust, recovery, a career arc. In crime fiction especially, the fantasy is immediacy: the decisive move, the clean score, the fast exit. This line undercuts that fantasy with a mature irritant: the real drama is endurance, not speed.
Context matters because Bruce writes in genres where consequences compound. The quote isn’t asking you to romanticize delay; it’s telling you that the things that change you tend to arrive on their own schedule, and your job is to stay intact long enough to meet them.
The phrasing does a lot of sly work. “Usually” keeps it honest, resisting the motivational-poster lie that waiting always pays off. Sometimes you wait and get nothing; sometimes you get lucky fast. Bruce is describing a pattern, not a promise. “Have to” adds pressure: the wait isn’t optional, it’s built into the structure of anything “worth” having. That word, “worth,” is the moral engine of the quote. It implies a market of value where time is the proof of seriousness, and where quick gratification carries an odor of cheapness.
Subtextually, it’s also about control. Waiting forces you to confront how little you can brute-force outcomes - relationships, mastery, trust, recovery, a career arc. In crime fiction especially, the fantasy is immediacy: the decisive move, the clean score, the fast exit. This line undercuts that fantasy with a mature irritant: the real drama is endurance, not speed.
Context matters because Bruce writes in genres where consequences compound. The quote isn’t asking you to romanticize delay; it’s telling you that the things that change you tend to arrive on their own schedule, and your job is to stay intact long enough to meet them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Perseverance |
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