Quotes About Expectations

Writing in 1957, Dr. Spock endorsed the process: "This is the way Nature expects human beings to learn child care—from their own childhood.

She hated the implied familiarity when customers requested things from her by name...

Women had made progress - Jo only had to look as far as the television set to see it - but she wondered whether they would ever not try to have it all and do it all and do it all flawlessly. Would the day ever come when simply doing your best would be enough?

You don't think she ever loved your dad?" Shelley shook her head. "I think, for her, it was more like taking a job than falling in love. If you've been bred to marry a rich man and have his babies and basically be decoration, and you have no skills and no idea how to support yourself, how many options do you really have?

Would the day ever come when simply doing your best would be enough?

She wondered whether they would ever not try to have it all and do it all and do all of it flawlessly. Would the day ever come when simply doing your best would be enough?" Wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, aunt, caretaker, career women: Mrs. Everything attempts to cover it all.

There is no magic weight, no magic size, no magic number on the scale where, as soon as you hit it, confetti rains down and a band starts to play and hidden doors slide open and Daniel Craig walks through them to lift you in his arms (because, thin as you are, he totally can) and carry you into the life of uninterrupted bliss that you just know could be yours, if you only wore a size two dress.

She'd seen it happen to her friends, fellow PhD students, some who'd published their work. Put a ring on their finger and, through some dark magic, they turned into wives and mothers, and instead of talking about Elizabethan poetry or symbolism in Shakespeare's sonnets or how the market economy had shaped post–Civil War America, it was all teething and toilet training and which towns had the most desirable school districts.

People don't like to see things that aren't perfect. It reminds them of what could go wrong in their own lives, I guess.

Anger surged inside her, and Bethie tried to push it aside. I could have this, if I wanted it, she told herself. She could starve herself thin again, cut her hair, find a guy, buy a little house in a neighborhood full of identical little houses. She could have everything Barbara had, everything her sister had, only she didn't want it, not any of it.

long as people can still surprise you, it means you're not dead.

But if, in the end, she never lived the glittering, rich-lady life of her youthful imaginings, she'd have a life that made her happy.

Women had made progress—Jo only had to look as far as the television set to see it—but she wondered whether they would ever not try to have it all and do it all and do all of it flawlessly. Would the day ever come when simply doing your best would be enough?

see it—but she wondered whether they would ever not try to have it all and do it all and do all of it flawlessly. Would the day ever come when simply doing your best would be enough? Her

The problem was, he'd never told me what he wanted, which meant I never got to think about whether it was what I wanted, too.

I'd lost . . . ten pounds? Twelve? Enough to make me believe that if I just kept at it I could lose the weight, the percentage of myself, that would finally make my body acceptable. Enough to make me believe that a man could like me, could look past my current incarnation and see the beauty that would be revealed when I dropped another thirty pounds.

my chest. All I'd wanted was for someone to be happy for me—happy with me, straight-up happy, not happy with questions, or happy with reservations, or happy but confused, or not happy at all . . . and there was no one in my life, including my husband, who fit the bill.

The idea that I could somehow end up with a giant chunk of cash at the end of this left me feeling shivery, hot and then cold, like I was coming down with the flu.

As long as people can still surprise you, it means you're not dead.

schools—a place to deposit a wayward son

Her moods were totally unpredictable, and Ben was never sure how he would find her upon his return at the end of the day. At times he felt that he should enter their home by putting his hat on a stick and poking it into the doorway to see if it would be embraced, ignored, or shot at.

Quality time" becomes a guilt-induced euphemism for "not enough time.

if my name was on a serious work like this it would never get fair treatment. They would all say I had tried to be funny and failed.

As much as Vicky loved her husband and he her, Fritz was not a man to demand anything from his august parents, not respect or even respectful treatment for his wife.