Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.

The line frames desire and fulfillment as separated by an intervening reality—“the world”—that does not automatically yield to intention. It suggests that wishing is private and instantaneous, while “the thing” (achievement, possession, change) requires passage through external conditions: time, chance, other people, material limits, and moral consequence. The phrase “lies waiting” implies a kind of impassive neutrality: the world does not hurry to meet our wants; it simply stands there, to be confronted. In a McCarthy-like register, the sentence also hints at fatalism: between longing and outcome is a vast, indifferent space where plans can be thwarted and where action, not desire, is tested.