Quotes About Expectations

Mom wants me to be an engineer and scientist.

What good is it to perform anyway? The audience sits there like logs, they cough and sneeze, they don't dress up anymore. Do you know what it's like playing Brahms for people wearing blue jeans and T-shirts?

Parents, Maisie had learnt over the years, may be considered an unfortunate necessity by their offspring, but more often than not they are also an embarrassment.

To be allowed to pursue a career of his own choosing, and not just be expected to follow in his father's footsteps.

Granpa just groaned and said, "I don't want you to end up workin' in the East End, young 'un. You're far too good to be a barrow boy for the rest of your life." It made me sad to hear him speak like that; he didn't seem to understand that was all I wanted to do.

I was beginning to understand something about normality. Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself. But people-and especially doctors- had doubts about normality. They weren't sure normality was up the job. And so they felt inclined to give it a boost.

They were bound for college, husbands, child-rearing, unhappiness only dimly perceived—bound, in other words, for life.

But, like anyone in love, Madeleine believed that her own relationship was different from every other relationship, immune from typical problems.

Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself.

What my yia yia could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time.

They were moving along like that, each cupping a hold of the other. In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the beautiful and fortunate, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.

He wanted women to love him, all women, beginning with his mother and going on from there. Therefore, whenever any woman got mad at him, he felt maternal disapproval crashing down upon his shoulders, as if he'd been a naughty boy.

I went to church. It didn't help. In those days that was the best place to meet a girlfriend. In church! All of us praying to be different.

Here it comes, I thought. The first ex-boyfriend had been summoned. Soon the rest would follow. They would file around the table, presenting their deficiencies, telling of their addictions, their cheating hearts... But that didn't happen with Julie. This was because Julie isn't husband-hunting. So she didn't have to interview me for the job.

It might not even be that great to marry your ideal. Probably, once you attained your ideal, you got bored and wanted another.

We realized that the version of the world [our parents] rendered for us was not the world they really believed in, and that for all their caretaking and bitching about crabgrass they didn't give a damn about lawns.

As meninas estavam enormes naqueles vestidos de cerimónia, construídos à volta de uma estrutura de arame. Tinham quilos e quilos de cabelo, bem presos, na cabeça. Embriagadas, beijando-nos, ou a desmaiar nas cadeiras, estavam destinadas ao ensino superior, aos maridos, à educação dos filhos, à infelicidade que dificilmente se percebia - enfim, à vida.

That was when I realized a shocking thing. I couldn't become a man without becoming The Man. Even if I didn't want to.

It was impossible to be friends with guys. Every guy she'd ever been friends with had ended up wanting something else, or had wanted something else from the beginning, and had been friends only under false pretenses.

My mother pictured a daughter as a counterinsurgent: a fellow lover of lapdogs, a seconder of proposals to attend the Ice Capades. In

She wasn't so special, maybe. She was his ideal, but an early conception of it, and he would get over it in time.

Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself. But people—and especially doctors—had doubts about normality. They weren't sure normality was up to the job. And so they felt inclined to give it a boost.

Supimos de esa cárcel que es ser chica, de los impulsos y sueños que genera y por qué acaban sabiendo qué colores combinan y cuáles no.

It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.