Quotes About Expectations

Oh, the lengths this family would go to so as not to spoil the picture of how things were supposed to be!

Oh, the terrible, crushing, breath-stealing burden of people who think they own you!

The only place I went wrong, he writes, was expecting things to be perfect. Abruptly, he signals for a turn, and when the light changes he heads east instead of continuing north.

He would always make her feel too big and too gruff and too shocking; she would forever be trying to watch her words when she was with him. He was not the kind of person who liked her true self, for better or worse.

Sometimes Rebecca thought that the whole point of having lots of daughters was, the law of averages said at least one of them might behave right at any given time.

There were advantages to being a girl and having nothing much expected of you.

he was a party-giver." "But he never felt party-giving was really his true life," Poppy reminded her. "Well, no." "And that's where he and I differed," Poppy said. "Because I was always telling him, 'Look,' I said. 'Face it,' I said. 'There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got,' I said.

It seemed jobs kept disappointing him, as did business partners and girlfriends and entire geographical regions.

Mom? Was there a certain conscious point in your life when you decided to settle for being ordinary?' 

I'm worry if I come to close, they'll say I'm overstepping. They'll say I'm pushy or… emotional, you know. But if I back off, they might think that I don't care. I really honestly believe I missed some rule that everyone else takes for granted; I must have been absent from school that day.There's this narrow little dividing line I somehow never located.

When she grew up she was going to marry a man who came from a big, close, jolly family. He would get along with all of them—he'd be the same kind of man her father was

She'd been so intent on not turning into her mother, she had gone and turned into her father.

Just like his daddy, but his daddy wants Red to be different from him. Isn't that always how it is?

When does the time come when you stand in front of your grown-up woman's mirror and feel contentment for what you see? Ever?

the quality you marry a person for will end up being what you hate them for, most often.

turned out that Elaine was so cool and sensible that she arranged to arrive the night before the funeral and fly out right afterward. Willa wasn't happy about that. Still, she had to admit that her literal request had been for Elaine to come to the funeral, period. Oh, they were never going to be like the sisters in Little Women!

She had promised herself that her children would never have to worry what sort of mood she was in; they would never peek into her bedroom in the morning to see how their day was going to go. She was the only woman she knew whose prime objective was to be taken for granted.

that the quality you marry a person for will end up being what you hate them for, most often.

If we had been any different, would they have loved us?

They certainly didn't resemble the people you pictured when you saw those don't kill mee-maw signs urging masks and social distancing

He had been a boy who liked to draw, according to my friend, so he became an architect. Children who drew,I learned, became architects; I had thought they became painters. My friend explained that it was not proper to become a painter; it couldn't be done. I resigned myself to architecture school and a long life of drawing buildings. It was a pity, for I disliked buildings, considering them only a stiffer and more ample form of clothing, and no more important.

No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and they wear out their brains learning what folks expect, and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks.

Happy endings are popular. Do you not watch movies? Yeah, but that's movies, Darcy groaned. Books are above all that!

Doing what you're supposed to do is always boring.