Quotes About Expectations

We may pass violets looking for roses. We may pass contentment looking for victory.

When I started learning the violin, my choir teacher thought I could sing. But when I first got on stage, I froze!

Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I'm finishing, even if it's turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don't admit it, they're not being honest.

Surely in a world of email, video conferencing and virtual assistants, isn't being expected to show up at the office extremely anachronistic? Yet to date it seems that where one works does matter. That creativity and innovation do feed off physical interactions between people.

Nanotechnology has been moving a little faster than I expected, virtual reality a little slower.

Goodness knows, I tried. But I think it's virtually impossible for the right kind of man to be married to a movie star.

I win virtually every case I should win, and I win a number of cases that people think I shouldn't.

People assume I must have this fantastic body that I'm dying to show off but the truth is I have body issues - just like virtually everybody else.

You want to make people laugh and by virtue of that please them, but when you're instructed to make people laugh and please them, you're too resentful to do it.

Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it in your subordinates.

One of the virtues of 'The X-Men' was that it managed to transcend the expectations and prejudices of the medium. It appealed to a vaster audience than anyone had ever anticipated from any superhero book, much less 'X-Men.'

I grew up in Christianity. They preach a lot that you should get married and be a wife and be a virtuous woman and all of that. So I was so eager to do that, and I didn't really take the time I needed to grow into my own. And I ended up running into a really bad situation. I didn't even really date my ex-husband. We just kind of jumped into it.

Obviously, nobody chooses not to have kids because they'd rather sleep in late. It's a very visceral decision, and it's a complicated decision.

The presidency is the most visible thread that runs through the tapestry of the American government. More often than not, for good or for ill, it sets the tone for the other branches and spurs the expectations of the people.

I think that anytime you're doing casting and you're casting something that has a lot of existing fans you're going to get a lot of opinions about whether it matches fans vision.

It's not really possible to open 'The Casual Vacancy' without a lot of expectations both high and low crashing around in your brain and distorting your vision. There's no point pretending they're not there.

When you see somebody who's got a complaining personality, it usually means that they had some vision of what things could be, and they're constantly disappointed by that. I think that would be the camp that I would fall into - constantly horrified by the things people do.

Satisfying every vision that fans have is probably impossible.

It's not only imagination, it's the distortion of the vision. You suddenly think, This person is idealistic, this person is strong, this person has dreams, when you know better most of the time. You put what you want to see on people.

If don't recognize that "the perfect is the enemy of the good" yo may deprive yourself of joy

If you don't recognize that the perfect is the enemy of the good, you may deprive yourself of joy.

When your mother emerges from her depression and suddenly seems interested in your days and acts the way you see other kids' moms acting, you don't dare feel joy because you know from experience that it will all go away. And it does. Every single time.

that toughest of tough questions: What do I owe my parents, and what do they owe me?

But . . . if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things . . . about Holland.