Quotes About Expectations

And that's the crucial element of life experience that so many of us avoid, you know. Trying something new, taking that single leap of faith into the utterly and absolutely unknown. Into the different. Those who take that leap are the ones who challenge whatever fate they might otherwise have. They fly in the face of societal expectations, determining for themselves who and what they will be and not allowing the bonds of birth, class, and bias to make that determination for them.

How could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after? It had to work. Didn't it?

But to yell at your creativity, saying, "You must earn money for me!" is sort of like yelling at a cat; it has no idea what you're talking about, and all you're doing is scaring it away, because you're making really loud noises and your face looks weird when you do that.

Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life's expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.

Until I can feel as ecstatic about having a baby as I felt about going to New Zealand to search for giant squid, I cannot have a baby.

I was a veritable Johnny Appleseed of grand expectations, and all I reaped for my trouble was a harvest of bitter fruit.

Not many people know how to be satisfied.

Then my mother shocked me. She said, All those things that you want from your relationship, Liz? I have always wanted those things too. [She] showed me the handful of bullets she'd had to bite over the decades in order to stay happily married (and she was happily married...) to my father. You have to understand how little I was raised to expect that I desired in life, honey. Remember- I come from a different time and place... and you have to understand how much I love your father.

Indeed, when I came to Italy, I expected to encounter a certain amount of resentment, but have received instead empathy from most Italians. In any reference to George Bush, people only nod to Berlusconi, saying,We understand how it is - we have one, too.

He was playing a character I had invented, which is somewhat telling. In desperate love, it's always like this, isn't it? In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place...

how could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after? It had to work. Didn't it? Reunited with fresh hopes, we'd share a few deliriously happy days together. Or sometimes even weeks.

As for discipline—it's important, but sort of overrated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you.

I have watched so many other people murder their creativity by demanding that their art pay the bills.

Now, I cannot imagine where women ever got the idea that they must be perfect in order to be loved or successful. (Ha ha ha! Just kidding! I can totally imagine: We got it from every single message society has ever sent us! Thanks, all of human history!)

We were so committed to solving this thing. Because how could two people so in love NOT end up happily ever after? It HAD to work. Didn't it?

I asked for so little!" she kept saying, as though her diminished demands alone should have protected her against any disappointments. But I think she was mistaken; she had actually asked for a lot. She had dared to ask for happiness, and she had dared to expect that happiness out of her marriage. You can't possibly ask for more than that.

What does any of that have to do with the quiet glory of merely making things, and then sharing those things with an open heart and no expectations?

When artists are burdened with the label of "genius," I think they lose the ability to take themselves lightly, or to create freely.

There's something about a white gown - setting aside the obnoxious question of virginity - that signals to a man that this day is not like any other day. It shows him that he's been chosen. It means a lot to men, I have learned over the years, to see their brides walking toward them in white. Helps to quiet their insecurities. And you'd be surprised how insecure the men can be.

When she was pregnant with her second child, a midwife asked if Catherine had any unspoken fears about anything that could go wrong with the baby - such as genetic defects or complications during the birth. My sister said, 'My only fear is that he might grow up to become a Republican.

In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.

Perfectionism stops people from completing their work, yes—but even worse, it often stops people from beginning their work. Perfectionists

Never learn to type, kiddo. And if you do learn to type, never tell anybody you can type, or they'll make you do it forever. Never learn shorthand either. It'll be the death of you. They'll put a steno pad in a woman's hand and it'll never come out.

Until I can feel as ecstatic about having a baby as I felt about going to New Zealand to search for a giant squid, I cannot have a baby.