top of page
"Long after Salinger sent me away, I continued to believe his standards and expectations were the best ones."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Expectation quotes

"I am often guilty of expecting the worst so as to avoid disappointment and welcome surprise."

"Expectations create and shape reality."

"Weren't you alwaysdistracted by expectation, as if every eventannounced a beloved? (Where can you find a placeto keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside yougoing and coming and often staying all night.)"

"Expect nothing but be ready for everything."

"That's the thing about being the product of happily marries parents, You grow up thinking the fairy tale is real, and more than that, you think you're entitled to live it. So far, though, it wasn't working out as planned."

"Not the action, but the expectation creates results."

"Live without expectations. Don't set parameters on your life by telling yourself that something can only be enjoyed if it is a certain way. Allow life to surprise you. Keep an open mind and enjoy all of life's treasures."

"Whatever you search for will either meet you halfway or wait for you."

"Some people won't go the extra mile, and then on their birthday, when no one makes a fuss, they feel neglected and bitter."

"We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to."
Explore more quotes by Joyce Maynard

"Nothing like being visible, publishing one's work, and speaking openly about one's life, to disabuse the world of the illusion of one's perfection and purity."

"My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer?"

"It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself."

"I believed my story would be helpful to young women my daughter's age, who are still in the process of forming themselves as women, and in need of encouragement to remain true to themselves."

"Women writers have been told, forever, that our stories were not valuable. Not as valuable as men's stories about wars, business, power."

"Some literary types subscribe to the notion that being a writer like Salinger entitles a person to remain free of the standards that might apply to mere mortals."

"The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I've written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval."

"I wonder what it is that the people who criticize me for telling this story truly object to: is it that I have dared to tell the story? Or that the story turns out not to be the one they wanted to hear?"
bottom of page