Quotes About Expectations

You're trapped both ways. You do as you are told and you do things that you think will make you big, but all the time you're shrinking.

It must be quite hard when you're a parent and you find out that your children's dreams are nothing like the dreams you've had for them.

Sugar, nobody's perfect. And when ladies try to be perfect, their periods stop.

All my life, I'd thought of having kids with the seriousness that I'd thought of taking a ceramics class. When I finally took one and came home with three beautifully glazed but warped bowls, my husband said: "You're not going to turn into a lady who makes pots, are you?" I was not. I kept the bowls and display them proudly—one holds fruit, one batteries, one loose change—but I had no interest in making anything else.

It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting "Cathy" and banging your head against a tree.

Resolution number one: Obviously will lose twenty pounds. Number two: Always put last night's panties in the laundry basket. Equally important, will find sensible boyfriend to go out with and not continue to form romantic attachments to any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobic's, peeping toms, megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits or perverts. And especially will not fantasize about a particular person who embodies all these things

I am a child of Cosmopolitan culture, have been traumatized by supermodels and too many quizzes and know that neither my personality nor my body is up to it if left to its own devices. I can't take the pressure.

If you can forget the stultifying concept that there are appropriate years for certain endeavors (like getting married) and appropriate days for being gay and merry (like Saturday nights) and use these times without embarrassment or self-pity to do something creative and constructive, I believe half your single girl battle is over.

I want to warn twentysomething women that the old bargain has not changed all that much. You can only have it all if you do it all.

His mother lavished attention on her dogs and her husband had them shot. She lavished attention on the boy and the boy was convinced he'd be next.

He is only a man. Success is a pressure. He cannot quite bear it. It boils and bubbles. And without knowing it, quietly and cruelly, he begins to sabotage his success, because success cannot be borne. It is so very easily done.

happiness. An obscure shame grips me. I had a fixed idea of what a goshawk was, just as those Victorian falconers had, and it was not big enough to hold what goshawks are. No one had ever told me goshawks played. It was not in the books. I had not imagined it was possible. I wondered if it was because no one had ever played with them. The thought made me terribly sad.

I watched wealthy men and their wives and dates dancing and playing cards and making deals: I will admire you exactly as much, no more or less, as you admire me. I will love you in the strictest moderation.

Isn't that what you thought you'd bought . . . affectionate obedience? Somebody who wouldn't feel any more or any less than you wanted her to feel, someone who'd love but not dare to—whatever it turns out I've dared to do. But really you shouldn't be surprised this happened; this is what you get for placing people in your debt in such a way that they can never repay it!

She has a soft spot for houses that look sensible until you get inside.

The book itself was useless, too. All the advice it offered about the timing of meals and affecting a cheerful disposition and trying to take an interest in the husband's doings even when they're fearfully boring and never saying 'I told you so'--those aren't the reasons a person looks with favour upon another person, these aren't the reasons someone stays in love.

Every member of this class is under the impression that they are thick, and every single one of them is the opposite. Passing the GCSE now probably won't improve their job prospects or raise their estimation in the eyes of their family and friends.

I was always weak in the head—that must be it. I can't seem to care anymore about what I'm supposed to do.

I like driving cab. Receptionists, sales clerks, waitresses -- they all have to look pleasant all the time. I can snarl if I want. There ain't too many women who can do that. Maybe garment workers are allowed to snarl at their sewing machines. But women mostly have to look pleasant when they're fucking miserable, and smile when they're angry.

In the '50s, a lot of girls never saw beyond the wedding day.

When a girl marries she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one.

Nowadays love is a matter of chance, matrimony a matter of money and divorce a matter of course.

Why does a man take it for granted that a girl who flirts with him wants him to kiss her - when, nine times out of ten, she only wants him to want to kiss her?

Before marriage, a man declares that he would lay down his life to serve you after marriage, he won't even lay down his newspaper to talk to you.