Quotes About Expectations

When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.

My desire was no less than before, you understand, but I no longer identified with the desire. Perhaps that is why taking them too seriously, we not only increase our susceptibility to disappointment, we actually create a climate inhospitable to the free and easy fulfillment of those desires.

I have learned something that many women these days never learn: Prince Charming really is a toad. And the beautiful Princess has halitosis. The bottom line is that a) people are never perfect, but love can be, b) that is the one and only way that they mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn't that be the way to make love stay?

They warn us when we're kids that we're going to have to suffer, but they neglect to mention the indignity. What self-respecting fetus, if shown its future as a proctology patient, boot-camp recruit, or game show contestant, would still elect to be born?

When life demands more of people than they demand of life - as is ordinarily the case - what results is a resentment of life that is almost as deep-seated as the fear of death. Indeed, the resentment of life and the fear of death are virtually synonymous. Does it follow, then, that the more people ask of living, the less their fear of dying?

You gotta come home. Be with me. After what we been through! We—we signed into that motel as man and wife! You put—you put your mouth on me. Shoulda checked the fine print, hon, whispered Ellen Cherry, trying to assist him back onto the ivy vines as quietly as possible. That blow job did not come with a lifetime warranty.

When we feel incomplete, we might search for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we may blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment.

And the message, no matter how entertainingly couched, is invariably the same: to be special, you must conform; to be happy, you must consume.

By identifying with our desires and taking them too seriously, we not only increase our susceptibility to disappointment, we actually create a climate inhospitable to the free and easy fulfillment of those desires.

When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on—series polygamy—until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment.

Marx Marvelous is going to break the genius machine when he grows up. That's what everyone said. He hasn't, of course.

You see, at that juncture in my life I wasn't evolved enough to understand the fluid nature of romantic love (its indifference to human cravings for permanence and certainty); its uncivilized, undomesticated nature (less like a pretty melody than a foxish barking at the moon), or, more importantly perhaps, that it's a privilege to love someone, to truly love them; and while it's paradisiacal if she or he loves you back, it's unfair to demand or expect reciprocity.

You can't treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires.

Apparently he thought he deserved only to be loved--from a distance, though--and given what he wanted. And in return he would be . . . what? Pleasant? Generous? Maybe all he was really saying was: I am not responsible for your pain; share your happiness with me but not your unhappiness.

But suppose my eyes aren't blue enough? Blue enough for what? Blue enough for…I don't know. Blue enough for something. Blue enough…for you!

The sad thing was that Pauline did not really care for clothes and makeup. She merely wanted other women to cast favorable glances her way.

And then she knew. Her friends and neighbors were angry at her because she had overstepped, given too much, offended them by excess.

I can't tell you why I was in love with her. People didn't require that much as they do now. Folks were expected to be civilized to one another, honest, and - and clear. You relied on people being what they said they were, because there was no other way to survive.

his bed was where they slept and where the great thing people warned about or giggled about took place. It was not so much painful as dull. Cee thought it would get better later. Better turned out to be simply more, and while the quantity increased, its pleasure lay in its brevity.

He didn't even care what I looked like. I could be anything, do anything- and it pleased him. Something about that made me mad.

My preference was the demolition of the lobby altogether. [Of all of my books], only Sula has this 'entrance.' The others refuse the 'presentation,' refuse the seductive safe harbor; the line of demarcation between…them and us. Refuse, in effect, to cater to the diminished expectations of the reader, or his or her alarm heightened by the emotional luggage one carries into the black-topic text….

But he could see why she wasn't married; she stirred a mans mind maybe, but not his body.

So I've grown up to be one of those people who gets angry at trees for behaving like trees

I remember, when I was about ten years old, working out that I would be thirty-six in the year 2000. It seemed so far away, so old, so unreal. And here I am, a fucked, crazy, anorexic-alcoholic-childless beautiful woman. I never dreamed it would be like this.