Quotes About Expectations

Most women are unwilling to settle for men who are less educated, less intelligent, and less professionally successful than they are. Men are less exacting on precisely these dimensions, choosing to prioritize youth and appearance. Women who make more money than their husbands tend to leave them.

The romantic fallacy occurs when we see ourselves through the lens of utopian visions of what we want people to be.

But there was also something swimming, an idea, a dream of what we were striving for and what it would look like when we got there. Then we got there, and it didn't look the same at all, somehow...Are all human beings malcontents?

Anna wanted her daughter to be precisely as she, Anna, was; saving that, a fine reflection. "Eleanor, I hardly know what's to happen to you," she would say, in legend, if not in fact. "You're so plain that you really have nothing to do except be good.

don't expect a magic formula that'll make books fall out of your head and automatically give you a wide readership.

The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

The rich and interactive experiences we have come to expect on mobile apps have created new standards and expectations for all digital media including the web. The result is websites are evolving to become more app-like in their rich functionality.

Even the most charmed life is a veritable travelogue of disappointment.

Oh, for Christ's sake,' I hear. 'Can we please just try to have a good time?' This is like ordering someone to find you attractive, and it doesn't work. I've tried it.

There's a lot I don't tell my father when he calls asking after Amy. He wouldn't understand that she has no interest in getting married and was, in fact, quite happy to break up with her live-in boyfriend, whom she replaced with an imaginary boyfriend named Ricky. The last time she was asked out by a successful bachelor, Amy hesitated before saying, 'Thanks for asking, but I'm really not into white guys right now.

But instead I am applying for a job as an elf. Even worse than applying is the very real possibility that I will not be hired, that I couldn't even find work as an elf. That's when you know you're a failure.

The woman had decided that I was a hard-ass, one of those guys who refuse under any circumstances to do anyone a favor. But it's not true. I just prefer that the favor be my idea, and that it leaves me feeling kind rather than bullied and uncomfortable.

If I'd been burned alive because of bad grades, my parents would have killed me, especially my father, who meant well but was just a little too gung ho for my taste.

What's wrong? he said. I'll tell you what's wrong: you're killing us. But I thought that's what you wanted? We did, my mother wept, but not this way. It hadn't occurred to me until that moment, but I seemed to have come full circle. What started as a dodge had inadvertently become my life's work, an irony I never could have appreciated had my extraordinary parents not put me through Princeton.

I wanted to be perfect," he said over dinner. "I…need to be perfect." It's such a burden to place on yourself. Say you are perfect—who's going to recognize it? Few things are like the Olympics, where judges hold up score cards. How does one paint perfectly? Or lawyer perfectly? The key is to fill the space between your skill level and perfection with charm. That said, you can't do it consciously. Charm can't be constructed that way.

Making it worse, I had to sit through another endless preview for Titanic. Who do they think is going to see that movie?

As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts. By this I meant that I would stop living in a fantasy world; that, while standing in line for a hamburger or my shot at the ATM, I would not daydream about befriending a gorilla or inventing a pill that would make hair waterproof.

I can't remember the last time I've enjoyed silence in an American theater. It's easy to believe that our audiences spend the day saying nothing, actually saving their voices for the moment the picture begins.

Something has changed, and now, when I look at my students, I see only people who are going to eat up my time.

We're not pessimists, exactly, but in late middle age, when you envision your life ten years down the line, you're more likely to see a bedpan than a Tony Award.

It is sad because you would like to believe that everyone is unique and then they disappoint you every time by being exactly the same, asking for the same things, reciting the exact same lines as though they have been handed a script.

The thing about sports, at least for guys, is that nobody ever defines the rules, not even in gym class. Asking what a penalty means is like asking who Jesus was. It's one of those things you're just supposed to know, and if you don't, there's something seriously wrong with you.

No surprises, no practical jokes, nothing unexpected, but a parent can't control everything, and there's a world of backfiring cars and their human equivalents.

Having spent my life trying to fit the will of others, I was unable to distinguish between what I enjoyed and what I thought I should enjoy.