If you can't please yourself some of the time, how do you expect to please people all the time? Not everyone is going to appreciate you for your efforts and deeds.

If your paramount concern in life is to make sure everyone likes and approves of you, you’re going to find yourself running in circles for the rest of your life.

Don’t assume your partner knows about everything you expect in a relationship. Let them know. A relationship should be based on communication, not on assumptions.

Was it too much to ask that she find someone who wanted the same things in life as she did--a home, someone to lean on when the not-so-perfect times came crashing down?

We form our impression not globally, by placing ourselves in the broadest possible context, but locally, by comparing ourselves to people in the same boat as ourselves.

We want to hear the story first and let the meaning unfold, rather than to be present with expectations of a certain significance into which all behavior is then fitted.

The secret self knows the anguish of our attachments and assures us that letting go of what we think we must have to be happy is the same as letting go of our unhappiness.

Yet how bored they both looked, and how wearily Ethel regarded Jim sometimes, as if she wondered why she had trained the vines of her affection on such a wind-shaken poplar.

It’s probably unfair to expect the world at large, or even most people, to see us for all we are. It is essential, however, that we see ourselves for all we are. (413)

We may not understand the pathways God lays out before us. We may not even like walking the journey. But even in failure, we can trust that He’ll do more than we expect.

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.

Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.

When we believe that God expects us to try hard to become who Jesus wants us to be, we will live in that blurry, frustrating land of Should Be rather than trust in The One Who Is.

It’s scary when it’s real. When it’s not just thinking about a person, but, like, having a real live person in front of you, with, like, expectations. And wants.

My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus."[The Science of Second-Guessing (New York Times Magazine Interview, December 12, 2004)]