Quotes About Expectations

Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

I'm just a kid - I've got a lot of stuff to do yet.

When moms and dads put their kids in acting class, good luck. Because you're just filling them with stuff they don't need yet.

The trouble with glossy magazines is that they tend to be stuffed with articles about handbag designers - the sort of women who, with their perfectly styled lives, immaculate houses, and adoring partners, make you want to become a hermit.

When you realize my best selling books are 'Owl Moon,' the 'How Do Dinosaur' books, and 'Devil's Arithmetic,' how can the public make sense of that! I have fans who think I only write picture books or only write SF and fantasy. I have fanatics of my poetry and are stunned to find out I write prose, too!

I'm stunned that people keep asking me to play characters I didn't expect to play.

Even actresses that you really admire, like Reese Witherspoon, you think, 'Another romantic comedy?' You see her in something like 'Walk the Line' and think, 'God, you're so great!' And then you think, 'Why is she doing these stupid romantic comedies?' But of course, it's for money and status.

I've made a lot of stupid action films. But when we made The Matrix, we saw that people wanted more than that.

I never thought I'd get to the point where I'd be able to release a proper album, and I absolutely never thought that when I did, I would give it a name as stupid I have, but here we are.

For a number of years, I'd been around the kind of people who financed movies and the kind of people who are there to make the deals for movies. But I'd always had this naive idea that everybody wants to make movies as good as they can be, which is stupid.

It might sound so stupid, but guys do not hit on me. I'm not really sure why, but it's very rare that a guy will ever come up to me and be like, 'I'm going to lay down my game right now, and you're going to like it.'

To boast of a performance which I cannot beat is merely stupid vanity. And if I can beat it that means there is nothing special about it. What has passed is already finished with. What I find more interesting is what is still to come.

I'll call somebody 'dumb' or 'stupid' if they make a dumb or stupid play. I don't know any other word for it, and if they don't like the word, that's too bad.

My mum's always on at me to have children and blames 'that stupid stage thing you do' for me not already having a family.

The basic function of a comic is stand-up because it's so straightforward and simple. If the audience don't laugh, you didn't do your job. I've had some audiences where I didn't care if they laughed or not because they were either too drunk or stupid.

I didn't want people to see me driving a new car and living in a high style and then playing poorly.

I think that a lot of people would perceive my style as being intimidating. And although I don't want to intimidate kids, I am very demanding.

I realized that I was African when I came to the United States. Whenever Africa came up in my college classes, everyone turned to me. It didn't matter whether the subject was Namibia or Egypt; I was expected to know, to explain.

Age brings a freedom. When you're young, you're much more subject to the idea of what feminine is or how you should look or how you should behave.

There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act.

Expectations that black directors have to make black films about black subject matter are, to me, kind of absurd.

I think there's a lot of anxiety about being seen as a bad parent. There's still a lot of subjects that I think people aren't entirely comfortable being honest about.

Nearly all interested parties think I write too shortly on the subjects that interest them most.