Quotes About Expectations

Sometimes Josie thought of her life as a room with no doors and no windows. It was a sumptuous room, sure-a room half the kids in Sterling High would have given their right arm to enter-but it was also a room from which there really wasn't an escape. Either Josie was someone she didn't want to be, or she was someone who nobody wanted.

How come people don't do things like that nowadays? You grope around in the back of a sedan in high school and you think you're in love. Nobody gets swept off their feet anymore.

It doesn't take a whole long life to realize that what we deserve to have, we rarely get.

Let me guess, Seven said last night. The first was a rebound. The second was married. How'd you know? He laughed. Because you're a cliché.

What do parents look like? You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he's really just hoping he makes it all the way across? Like that.

Because you can always count on a book to stay the same . Everything changes when you least expect it, she replies, bitter. Families split apart, and nothing's forever. In books, you always know what's coming next. There are no surprises.

She had spent her entire life being what everyone wanted her to be. The perfect daughter, the budding artist, the best friend, the first love. She had been so busy meeting everyone's expectations, in fact, that it had taken her years to remember exactly why it was all one big farce. She was not perfect, far from it, and what you saw on the outside was not what you really were getting. Deep down, she was dirty, and this was the kind of thing that happened to girls like her.

could not be blamed just because no one ever mentioned that once you closed the storybook, Cinderella still had to do laundry and clean the toilet and take care of the crown prince.

If you hurt, cry. If you rage, strike out. If you hope, get ready for a disappointment.

What people said they would do and what people actually did were two very different things.

Here's what I hadn't realized : the mother you haven't seen for almost 36 years isn't your mother. She is a stranger. Sharing DNA does not make you fast friends. This was not a joyous reunion. It was just awkward.

matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint.

Love was supposed to move mountains, to make the world go round, to be all you need, but it fell apart at the details.

were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations. Once, at a neighborhood dinner party, Lacy had asked him what happened if you had no expectations. You couldn't divide by zero. Did that mean if you just let yourself roll with all of life's punches, you could never be happy?

She had nothing left inside. She'd given it all to her son. And that was the greatest heartbreak of all—no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint. As it turns out, kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through.

Sometimes, ridiculously, the more perfect he was the angrier she got, as if his generosity existed only to highlight her own selfishness.

It is not that she isn't active or that she doesn't eat healthily. It's just how she is made, and if that isn't everyone's standard of perfect, then maybe they just have to revise their damn standard.

He wandered off, leaving me to wonder why white people named girl babies things like Hope and Faith and Patience—names they could never live up to—and black mothers called their daughters Mercy, Deliverance, Salvation—crosses they'd always have to bear.

F=R/E o, lo que es lo mismo, Felicidad es igual a Realidad dividido por Expectativas)

Do you have kids? Anna asks. I laugh. What do you think? It's probably a good thing, she admits. No offense, but you don't exactly look like a parent. That fascinates me. What do parents look like? She seems to think about this. You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he's really just hoping he makes it all the way across? Like that.

She had pictured suicide as a final statement, a fuck you to the people who hadn't understood how hard it was for her to be the Josie they wanted her to be.

if the only love you had ever known was conditional, so was the absence of it.

there is such a difference between living the life you are expected to live and living the life you want to live.

It's just how she is made, and if that isn't everyone's standard of perfect, then maybe they just have to revise their damn standard.