Quotes About Expectations

Having a world unfold in one's head is the fundamental SF experience. It's a lot of what I read for. Delany has a long passage about how your brain expands while reading the sentence "The red sun is high, the blue low"—how it fills in doubled purple shadows on the planet of a binary star. I think it goes beyond that, beyond the physical into the delight of reading about people who come from other societies and have different expectations.

how interesting that what comes out as doing the best he could in a man looks like neglect in a woman.

Which isn't to say I think women should be stuck with childrearing, but—how interesting that what comes out as doing the best he could in a man looks like neglect in a woman.

eight books sounds (and feels!) like a lot, but it isn't as if they'll last me all week.

Machismo itself had turned against the machos, made man a prisoner of himself, obliged not to cry, not to fail to get it up, not to give in, not to say uncle…. Fear, your name is macho, something the Bard never said, but that I do. How many women have screwed the man they wanted, simply because he couldn't refuse a woman?" [House of the Fortunate Buddha]

When will I ever learn to accept what is given instead of always yearning for more? My lavish expectations too often tarnish my blessings.

I don't want you to leap into another relationship without thinking. Looking for perfect is a big, fat myth because perfect isn't out there.

La perfección es algo maravilloso, pero es una mentira, porque no existe.

A worldly wise and somewhat overbearing Lucy asks the good-hearted and somewhat naive Charlie Brown, 'Charlie, what would you rather do, be captain of the baseball team or marry the cute redheaded girl?' And Charlie replies innocently, 'Why can't I do both?' to which Lucy responds, 'It's the real world, Charlie Brown.' "60

Perhaps the hardest lesson to learn is not to be attached to the results of your actions.

When he came home I was well groomed, fragrant, feminine. He never saw a laundry bag, a dust cloth, or a hair curler. I hope he never knew that such things existed!

I never regaled him with an account of what the children had done, the lateness of deliveries because of traffic, or the neighborhood gossip (unless it was a particularly juicy bit!). There's nothing less stimulating for a man than the day-to-day business of raising four children. That's woman's work. If she's lucky she revels in it. If not, she gets it done anyhow, and in the time allotted for it.

Once we demanded two chickens in every pot, then two cars in every garage. Now families want two homes—one a retreat for weekends and vacations—and maybe a boat or an airplane. So it follows that they need two pay checks.

Of course every woman tries to be a good mother, and then wonders if, after all her best efforts, her children will wind up on a headshrinker's couch complaining about bad treatment.

The essence of life is not to find the one thing that satisfies us but to realize that nothing can ever completely satisfy us. And that's all right.

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves--there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

I thought carefully about the events of the evening and decided that there must be limitations on desires. It wasn't true that I could have anything I wanted. I felt good about understanding that, but I still didn't know how people figured out what it was safe to want. I did know, from my mother's scolding, that 'wanting' was a problem. If the desire could not be filled, then I was greedy and selfish. Since I couldn't figure out how to judge the possibility of fulfilling a desire. (66).

The Karen personality was created when Jo was nine and her mother said once too often, "Why can't you be like your cousin Karen?" Jo's internal Karen was the perfect mimic of her cousin, and fulfilled Nancy's demand that the child be neat and organized.

People don't want to see women doing things they don't think women should do.

The follow your dreams thing is really important because so many people are railroaded into taking other paths by their family, their friends, people who should be supportive going, 'What are you talking about?' Even just seemingly regular career paths, but if it's not what people expect for you they kind of react funny.

Why is it, Miranda,' she whispered, 'that such a sweet pretty creature is a schoolteacher – of all dreary things in the world . . .?

Don't cook. Don't clean. No man will ever make love to a woman because she waxed the linoleum - "My God, the floor's immaculate. Lie down, you hot bitch."

The one thing women don't want to find in their stockings on Christmas morning is their husband.

A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp.