Thomas Mann Quote

And waiting means hurrying on ahead, it means regarding time and the present moment not as a boon, but an obstruction; it means making their actual content null and void, by mentally overleaping them. Waiting we say is long. We might just as well—or more accurately—say it is short, since it consumes whole spaces of time without our living them or making any use of them as such.

The Magic Mountain (1924) ch. 5, sect. 5 (translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter)