Quotes About Expectations

As an author, I really hate a reader like me. There's no loyalty.

Early on, after gay liberation, there was an almost Stalinist pressure from gay critics and even gay readers to write about positive role models. We were never supposed to write negative things about gays, or else we were seen as collaborating with the enemy.

With 'The Angel's Game', there was a lot of pressure from the expectations - expectations from the book industry and from readers; it's natural.

I don't write the kind of 'happily ever after' that romance readers enjoy.

It's interesting that so many books now are published as the first in a series. It never occurred to me. Although 'The Giver' does have an ambiguous ending. I've heard about that from readers over the years.

If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.

When I settled to writing seriously, which would be in my 30s, I did expect to be published eventually, but my aspirations weren't very high. A published book and a few appreciative readers was my idea of heaven.

The reality of the writer's world is that you set yourself up for disappointment with every success that you deliver because with every success you raise your readers' expectations.

I've had mainstream readers complain that the book is really a romance, and romance readers complain that the book isn't a romance - with the same book! It really depends on the individual reader's expectations going into the story, and that's very hard to predict person to person.

For commercial books in a genre, readers' and editors' expectations may be fairly rigid. Some romance lines, for instance, issue fairly detailed writers' guidelines explaining exactly what must happen in a book they publish (and what must not).

I understand that fictional men aren't real. Not 'really real'. I know this the same way I wonder if my readers are disappointed when they meet me.

When I came into politics, I remember reading these scorecards of my performance, and I would routinely have these comments about not being assertive enough.

My mom says: 'Why aren't you a doctor?' and I'm like, 'I am a doctor!' and she's all, 'No, I mean a real doctor.' She reads my books, but she says they give her a headache.

I think there are a lot of actors who are excellent at cold reads, and they go to an audition, and they read the part and nail it, but then when it comes to the performance, they don't have something.

Being the leader of a division is a pressure, but it's one that I feel I am ready for.

Some actors come to the set ready to do their parts a certain way.

A woman who is not ready to have a baby making it work is not a happy ending to me. It's a personal nightmare.

In the '70s, you had to come up with an album every year whether you were ready or not.

I believe in books that do not go to a ready-made public. I'm looking for readers I would like to make. To win them, to create readers rather than to give something that readers are expecting. That would bore me to death.

As a candidate, Obama projected himself as a new Reagan, above narrow party politics. He wanted to please all but has ended up annoying many.

There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

People see me as a person who can make them some money, which makes it hard to make real friends. I'm asked to do a lot of stuff for free - to wear certain clothes, turn up to events - people use you to make money. I think that's why I tend to jump into relationships.

Parents will be parents. Even now, my mom asks me sometimes, 'When are you going to go back and get a real job?'

I kept thinking, I went to college and I have to get a real job.