Quotes About Expectations

Just when we think we have mastered what is expected of us, relationships change, new persons join us on the journey, or circumstances call for untried roles.

From that day forward she never used my name. Eventually I forgot it. Mrs. H called me something new. She named me cruel and smirking, she named me not for beauty or for cleverness or for sweetness. She named me a thing I could aspire to but never become, the one thing I was not and could never be: Snow White.

Marya Morevna! Don't you know anything? Girls must be very, very careful to care only for ribbons and magazines and wedding rings. They must sweep their hearts clean of anything but kisses and theater and dancing. They must never read Pushkin; they must never say clever things; they must never have sly eyes or wear their hair loose and wander around barefoot, or they will draw his attention!

You can't stop people being assholes. They do love it so. The best you can hope for is that some people, sometimes, will turn out to be somewhat less than the absolute worst. When they manage to trip and fall over that incredibly low bar, they'll make you want to end it all. But when they leap over it, they'll make you believe this whole mess really was created for a reason.

You know what a fate looks like, don't you? It's just a little toy version of yourself, made out of alabaster and emerald and a little bit of lapis lazuli and ambition and coincidence and regret and everyone else's expectations and laziness and hope and where you're born and who to and everything you're afraid of plus everything that's afraid of you.

Nothing real is pretty, she said. Only a doll is pretty. And a pretty doll drinks out of a tiny cup forever. A woman wants a big cup.

all children are required to attend School, which is like a party to which everyone forgot to bring punch, or hats, or fiddles, and none of the games have good prizes.

If a bird or any other beast comes out of that uncanny republic where husbands are grown, I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.

There is no such thing as a good wife or a good husband. Only ones who bide their time.

Maybe [Snow White] never wakes up. More likely than anything else, really. You can't kiss a girl into anything.

So you don't love him. Why would you look for love with a man? How could a man ever understand you?

Marya supposed this was why no one asked after stolen fairy tale girls. What embarrassments they turn out to be. They grow tempers; they join the army; they need glasses. Who wants them?

Only a fool is so innocent as to think he can measure up to a woman's first love.

She knew very well what became of Princesses, as Princesses often get books written about them. Either terrible things happened to them, such as kidnappings and curses and pricking fingers and getting poisoned and locked up in towers, or else they just waited around till the Prince finished with the story and got around to marrying her. Either way, September wanted nothing to do with Princessing

You can't stop people being assholes. They do love it so. The best you can hope for is that some people, sometimes, will turn out to be somewhat less than the absolute worst. When they manage to trip and fall over that incredibly low bar, they'll make you want to end it all. But when they leap over it, they'll make you believe this whole mess really was created for a reason—the bastards.

This is what a grown-up looks like, thought September. Not like the grown-ups in my world who look sad and disappointed and grimy with work and bored with everything.

Arthur took me for granted, she thought. And I took him for granted. That is the point of marriage. That's what marriage is.

I grew up accepting the inevitability that once you became a woman, you were always on a diet. Being a woman equaled loss.

I think the greatest amount of pressure is the pressure I place on myself. So in a way I chose to be alone.

Happily ever after, like in the books,

Each of us wages a private battle each day between the grand fantasies we have for ourselves and what actually happens.

Food, love, career, and mothers, the four major guilt groups.

Mothers, food, love, and career - the four major guilt groups.

is that we don't always get what we deserve but we have to learn to live with what we get.