Quotes About Expectations

You are a nice person, and you're also full of anger. You're a walking tangle of contradictions. That's okay. Most of us are like that. Women, most of all. How could we not be? People want us to be sexy warriors who roll over and play dead on command. They want us to be flirty burlesque dancers in burkas, aggressive conquistadors with cookies in the oven, Dorothy Parker meets Dorothy Gale, Sandra Bernhard meets Sandra Dee, Kristen Stewart meets Martha Stewart.

Many of us learn to construct a clear and precise vision of what we want, but we're never taught how to enjoy what we actually have. There will always be more victories to strive for, more strangers to charm, more images to collect and pin to our vision boards. It's hard to want what we have; it's far easier to want everything in the world.

We are encouraged to believe in our dreams, but we are assumed to dream in the same limited palette as everyone else. We are to view ourselves as unique snowflakes only as it facilitates more efficiently melting ourselves into bottled spring water.

A century ago, survival was the main event. Longing was an accepted part of existence. Today, the inability to achieve happiness or fit in with the herd is treated as a kind of moral failure.

Adults are not always so fun. Sometimes I go to parties filled with mature people who know things and act their age and I"m quickly filled with despair. I walk in the door and greet the host and mill about, but in the pit of my stomach I know that leaving home was a mistake. I will not be surprised and delighted. I will not learn something new. I will not even enjoy the sound of my own voice. I will be lulled into a state of excruciating paralysis and self-hatred and other-people hatred.

Our culture exerts a constant pressure on us that severs our relationship to ourselves and each other.

Many of us learn to construct a clear and precise vision of what we want, but we're never taught how to enjoy what we actually have.

I used to be more like that woman, having fun with whatever task was in front of me instead of freaking out about how I looked to other people. I need to figure out how to get back there. My life has turned out great. Sow why am I comparing myself to perfectly styled, enviable, energetic professional in my head?...I keep saying to myself: "This is all wrong You are all wrong."..."You should be a shiny, infallible adult by now. Why are you still such a mess?

But we weren't married yet, so he still thought he could do whatever he wanted.

It's like she looks at me and only sees what she wants to see. My father looks at me and sees only what he wants me to be.

one of my biggest illusions was that other people were meant to assuage my anxiety by filling some lack that I was responsible for filling myself. If I wanted to give, the giving had to be "for fun and for free." The giving couldn't be out of guilt, nor because I secretly wanted to get something back, nor because I wanted the other person to respond in such a way as to satisfy my longing to be useful. Thérèse

Being a woman was a trap. Something would bring you down before you turned twenty-three. The only time the world shows you any favor, or cuts you any slack, is during that very brief period of courtship where the world is trying to fuck you for the first time.

What she didn't know, what she took for granted about living with Karl and being a wife, was far larger than the things she could name.

Why is it that girls think boys will notice them if they're loud anyway.

Friendship is not possible between two women, one of whom is very well dressed.

If you wrote your own characters, they didn't disappoint you like real people did.

I mean, if we could have everything, sure. If we can have it all, yeah, I wish them easy, successful, fun-filled lives, crowned with good friends, attentive lovers, heaps of money, intellectual stimulation, and good views out the window. I wish them eternal beauty, international travel, and smart things to watch on TV. But if I can't have everything, if I only get a few, I'm not sure easy makes my wish list.

These are things we all have to grapple with. A five-year-old has much to learn. When people are annoying, it feels good to push them but we mustn't. Even though it's often pleasant to shout, others are trying to concentrate. Though we'd always like to be first, sometimes it's someone else's turn. And when we behave in a manner other people don't expect, there will be consequences

He knew what people wanted in a mate. All of them. Every one. So far as Sam could tell they may have found it in the damnedest places but everyone wanted the same things in a partner. Kind. Funny. Hot. Fun. Smart. And totally in love.

It's irritating when people tell you that you're such good parents you're failing your kid.

I want a man as nice as my retarded dog, but one that doesn't crap on the floor.

It's a well-known fact that black sheep should never have lambs. You know what you get when you take a black sheep and give it a lamb? You get a thing called "supervised visitation" that's what.

As soon as Nicholas was born, my mother swore she'd rather see her daughters become Jehovah's Witnesses or pole dancers before she saw her first grandchild in daycare when my sister went back to work. I don't think it was originally the idea of daycare that didn't sit well with her but the fact that there, in a bassinet, was a fresh slate, a lump of clay that could be worked on and molded into the perfect child who had eluded her the first time around with her own daughters.

I was fairly certain that my strong-enough-for-King-Kong-but-made-for-a-woman deodorant had utterly failed.