Quotes About Expectations

Babies are always more trouble than you thought — and more wonderful.

Nobody goes to a zoo to dream about dragons.

There are people who invite betrayal. They are demanding towards themselves and don't realize how hard they are on other people. They make it difficult for others not to fail them. And in some cases they even take a grim pleasure from being let down.

For a member to say, 'I'm a lame duck' violates political science 101.

So long always as joy was not rashly pinned to the happening; so long as you accepted what joys the universe offered and did not seek to compel the universe to offer you joys of your own definition.

Life is, to some extent, an extended dialogue with your future self about how exactly you are going to let yourself down over the coming years.

You're here, supposedly, in a new land full of opportunity, but somehow have gotten trapped in a pretend version of the old country.

When you are thirteen, you spend all your time imagining what it would be like to live in a world where you could pay a robot for sex. And that sex would cost a dollar. And the only obstacle to getting that sex would be making sure you had four quarters. Then you grow up and it turns out you do live in that kind of world. A world with coin-operated sexbots. And it's not really as great as you thought it would be.

It's like all technology: either not powerful enough or too powerful. It will never do exactly what you want it to do.

Once that gets going, doors start opening until they're all open, the whole building buzzing until sunrise, as if nothing matters because nothing does matter because the idea was you came here, your parents and their parents and their parents, and you always seem to have just arrived and yet never seem to have actually arrived. You're here, supposedly, in a new land full of opportunity, but somehow have gotten trapped in a pretend version of the old country.

Henry's not a good guy. He's getting the life he deserves and most days he seems okay with that. I forget that the majority of people don't want special powers, like Henry, who can just barely handle being normal.

The son who got As in every subject, including English, now making a living as Generic Asian Man.

Parties somehow represent the rationing of fun, and that very concept depresses me. You're allowed to act like a tit at parties; therefore by implication, you're not allowed to act like a tit the rest of the time

Não consigo dormir esta noite. Encontro-me perante algo novo, algo pleno de expectativas. O futuro imediato é demasiado tentador para poder dormir.

Food. Water. Shelter. Air. Sleep. Societal inflation has expanded need into greed. Suddenly the basic survival needs also include a cell phone, cable TV, and French manicured fingernails.... We've become the absolute biggest whiners of all human history with the absolute smallest justification for whining.

No, listen. Us girls, we might all look different, but we're pretty similar underneath. We like to appear responsible, to do what's expected of us, we're not supposed to be reckless and wild and go off running with dodgy space tramps like you. But give us a nudge and --

I think what drove me insane for a long time is feeling like I hadn't earned most of what I achieved because it came so fast.

So far I'm not surprised by anything about being a mom. It's all pretty great - but that's what I expected.

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.

Some of the often told stories we use to con ourselves: It's getting better. Nobody's perfect. S/he had a hard childhood. I know s/he really loves me, s/he just has a hard time showing it. S/he has so much potential. I'm sure it will get better. Don't ever marry potential or plan on someone changing. Ask yourself, why would it get better? Why would this person change?

If we allow ourselves to be exactly where we are in the moment—fully present, noticing whatever is happening inside us and outside us—we can trade in judgment, fear, and shame for curiosity and fascination. Through awareness we start easing our demands, expectations, rituals, and self-grasping. We

You see," said Margaret kindly, "we all know that men have more power than women, and I suppose the time has come for Norman to pass beyond you. He would not be cleverer than any one, if he could not do more than a girl at home.

The people people choose for friendsYour common sense appall,But the people people marryAre the queerest folk of all.

Those "feminine charms" we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity—developed to please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process.