Quotes About Expectation

Don't count on the power of your love or your nagging to create something that wasn't there to begin with.

I'm a good example of wanting to apologize only for my precise share of a problem--as I calculate it, of course--and I expect my husband Steve to apologize for his share, also as I calculate it. Since we're not always of one mind on the math, it can lead to the theater of the absurd.

It's better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one, than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.

As you look at your life look at your goals and dreams, it's better to be prepared for an opportunity not have one than have an opportunity and not be prepared. If you expect to reach your goal prepare yourself now.

What does one dream of when the dream has been achieved?

A watched pot never boils. But it does get paranoid.

Well, the reason I called is . . . because he left me a message, and said he was coming back, and that he hoped to see me, a lot.

It's not a guideline—it's a deadline.

Every day has its own cereal box prize.

How disappointment tracks the steps of hope.

Do you remember when you found out there was no Santa Claus? I was so upset I didn't think I'd be able to do the show.

We're wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn't, we start looking around for the real world.

He wasn't surprised. He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you've done all the work to get something you don't even want it anymore.

Quentin was thin and tall, though he habitually hunched his shoulders in a vain attempt to brace himself against whatever blow was coming from the heavens, and which would logically hit the tall people first.

He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness. He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices. But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come.

It was the strangest thing, but he was looking forward to everything so much, he could hardly stand it. He never would have believed it. He never thought he would. "You know what?" He took Alice's hand. "Let's fly.

He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness. He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices. But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come. He couldn't think what else to do.

He's so happy," Eliot said dryly. "It's like he cooked something and it came out looking like the picture in the cookbook.

It was about damn time something happened.

And on and on, and it all sounded completely, horribly plausible. Any one of a thousand options promised - basically guaranteed - a rich, fulfilling, challenging future for him. So why did Quentin feel like he was looking around frantically for another way out? Why was he still waiting for some grand adventure to come and find him? The professors Quentin talked to about it didn't seem concerned at all. They didn't get what the problem was. What should he do? Why, anything he wanted to!

He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness. He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices. But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come. He couldn't think what else to do. He

She just assumed that everybody shared her desire for everybody to be clear on everything, and she'd expect you to do the same for her.

That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect. To

had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness. He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices. But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come. He couldn't think what else to do. He