Quotes About Expectations

The men I've been with have this idea to make me over. I feel like a rock in some boy's polishing kit. I go in dull, scratched up, and then rumble rumble whirr, I'm supposed to come out precious and sparkling again. Does it work? They seem to think so. How do you feel? I asked. A little smaller. (1998: 148- 149)

A piece of happiness should never be taken as due.

This was an unpleasant trend. I didn't want a lot of guys popping in and out of my bedroom. I wanted one who would stay.

If Hunter hadn't been there, I would've picked up the phone to call Eric. I would've asked him to bring a shovel and come to help me dig a body up. That was what a boyfriend should do, right? But I couldn't leave Hunter alone in the house, and I would've felt terrible if I'd ask Eric to go out in the woods by himself, even though I knew he wouldn't think anything about it. In fact, probably he'd have sent Pam.

I never set out to be a one-night-stand kinda woman. I want to be sure, if I have sex with you, that it's because you want to be around for a while and because you like me for who I am, not what I am. Maybe a million women had made approximately the same speech. I meant it as sincerely as any one of those million.

It was somehow degrading, craving someone so... voraciously - another good calendar word - just because he was physically beautiful. I hadn't thought that was something women did, either.

I don't know what it is, but even when I pretty much like a man, after I date him a while, he gets to seem kind of tiresome. I just can't be bothered to act interested anymore, and then I finally tell him I don't want to go out anymore. They always get upset. - Lillian

Now! I told myself briskly, to ward off the melancholy, as I dumped my cup and wrapper in the trash bin and left the restaurant. Now to work, then home, then out on a real date, and tomorrow get out early in the morning to find those boxes! I should have remembered that my plans seldom work out.

White used to symbolize the virgin purity of the wearer. Now it just meant the bride had acquired an expensive and unusable dress to hang in her closet after the big day.

I bought dresses. I got underwear. I have a purse. Now this man I've never met wants me to be married, too. Who made these people God?" "Themselves, apparently.

The southern standard of niceness was this: You'd never been convicted of anything, you didn't look at other's women's husbands too openly. You wrote your thank-you notes and were polite to your elders. You had to take a keen interest in your children's upbringing. And you made sure your family was fed adequately. There were sideways and byways in this "nice" thing, but those were the general have-tos.

After I left college I thought, very naively, that either you became someone interesting - an artist - or you went into academia. If you ended up in an office you were dull and lacking. And I ended up in an office.

The last thing I wanted to do was play another womanizer or ladies' man or Lothario. I've taken myself out of the running for a lot of those parts, because it's just more of the same.

I can't imagine living in a time where us women had to dress like 'ladies' because that is what was expected of us.

Where I'm from, to do acting is not heard of. Being one of the lads and all, you don't just go, 'Oh, I want to be an actor'. They'd laugh and joke about it.

I think as an older player, there's a kind of natural responsibility or natural role to go around the lads and say a few things. I had it when I came into the team; when you look to the older boys in certain situations to see what they say, see how they act, and see what they expect.

I don't feel like a first lady.

There is no job description for the first lady and she's only there because her husband got elected president.

Down South, there was the old 'ladies-don't-do-such-things' way of thinking. You couldn't be a lady and a good athlete at the same time.

When you become first lady, it's like, 'O.K., now what do you do?'

The life of the President's First Lady would not have been for me. And I don't know how I would have been as a housewife.

You can't always be a leading lady.

It's easier to make fun of a first lady than for a first lady to have fun. The scrutiny is ferocious.

My children were born into this. They will always be the grandchildren of the President and First Lady of the United States.