Quotes About Expectations

Tony has taught me that my habit of wanting to please people by saying that things are better than they are just creates disappointment, mine more than anyone else's. It's a form of control, as so much of generosity is.

If you were a woman you would certainly find your mother's life hanging over your head like a sword and you would be asking yourself what progress you had made, other than to double for yourself the work she had been expected to do and receive three times the blame for it.

and having never felt all that womanly in the first place, I believe the habit of impersonation has gone deeper in me than most, to the extent that some aspects of me do seem in fact to be male... The fact is that I received the clear message from the very beginning that everything would have been better- would have been right, would have been how it ought to be- had I been a boy.

a saddening thought, she said, that when a group of women get together, far from advancing the cause of femininity, they end up pathologising it.

Why do you play at being a woman?

The parts of life that are suffocating', Angeliki said, 'are so often the parts that are the projection of our parents' own desires

There was a great difference, I said, between the things I wanted and the things that I could apparently have, and until I had finally and forever made my peace with that fact, I had decided to want nothing at all.

He had, he said, attended every single event at the conference, even those conducted in languages he didn't understand: he felt the organisers would have been disappointed in him otherwise.

He had come to the conclusion that most questions were nothing more than an attempt to ascertain conformity, like rudimentary maths problems. Two and two did indeed usually equal four: it was when you gave a different answer, he had discovered, that people got upset.

The fact is that I received the clear message from the very beginning that everything would have been better – would have been right, would have been how it ought to be – had I been a boy.

There was a great difference, I said, between the things that I wanted and the things I could apparently have, and until I had finally and forever made my peace with that fact, I had decided to want nothing at all. (pp 171)

For most of the people she knew, people in their forties, this was a time of softening and expanding, of expectations growing blurred, of running a little to seed or to fat after the exhaustion of the chase: she saw them beginning to relax and make themselves comfortable in their lives.

There was a great difference, I said, between the things I wanted and the things I could apparently have, and until I had finally and forever made my peace with that fact, I had decided to want nothing at all.

Exactly what am I supposed to care about? That we were just getting to the fun stuff? That my hand was on your breasts, and your hands were all over my chest, and both of us were having a good time? Damn right I care about that. I wasn't finished. But don't expect me to care that a little old lady looked in the window and watched. Why should I care what people are going to say about that? People have talked about me since the day I was born. I stopped caring a long time ago.

If that's what you do to people you love, I can't imagine what you have in store for people you hate.

but it was always shocking how many guys weren't that great at knocking boots. Which was just baffling. Wasn't sex their number one job? Even above actually having a job?

You healed my heart and taught me that forgiveness is about love. I used to think that any man of mine had to live up to a list of my expectations. I was wrong. Love has no list. You are the pinch in my heart. The catch in my breath. The reason my stomach tumbles and why I lie awake at night just to look at you. And every time I look at you, I know that I want to look at you forever

During elections, if one says I do not promise anything to the voter, then he won't give his valuable vote. But while promising the voters, things that cannot be fulfilled should not be promised.

I used to say that winning the Oscar means being back at the Beverly Hills Hotel at 1 A.M. feeling empty. It's the industry voting. It doesn't come from God. It doesn't change your life, really.

I don't see people voting for me for coming from a political family. I see people voting for me despite me coming from a political family.

'The Vow,' I didn't know if people were going to want to see it, but we felt good about it. We we're like, 'Alright, either way, I liked the movie for what it was,' and I think we knew exactly what we were trying to do.

We definitely did not write our own vows. We're actors - people write things for us. We're not good enough for that.

For single women, admitting that you want kids when you're still unattached can feel like exposing a vulnerability. It did to me.

My greatest vulnerability is that I'm not 'normal.' I'm not married, I don't have children. It's something I feel defensive about.