Alexandra Petri Quotes

You expect certain things. You build up in your mind how it's supposed to go down. When you get a record deal, you think you're supposed to get X, Y, and Z. It doesn't happen like that. You're like 'Oh, this isn't as exciting as I thought it was going to be.'

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.

But my estimates, for instance, based upon book information, were simply ridiculous, fanciful images of African attractions were soon dissipated, anticipated pleasures vanished, and all crude ideas began to resolve themselves into shape.

Life doesn't always give us what we are expecting.

Life doesn't always end up with a bow wrapped around it.

Because people have read those things in the newspapers, they think it is true. Ten years ago all these things I have just mentioned would have upset me.

Film-making was not at all what I had expected.

I don't think any of us grew up into the world we were hoping for or expecting.

Part of my problem is that I cannot dispel the myths that have somehow accumulated over the years. Somebody writes something, it's completely off the wall, but it gets filed and repeated until everyone believes it. For instance, I've read that I wear a football helmet in the car.

I thought everything would be different in America. It wasn't.

When people talk about fake news, you know, a lot of folks just roll their eyes, like 'Oh, you know, whatever; people will figure it out.' The truth is, they don't always figure it out.

I'm not by nature a cynical person. But sometimes your expectations are different from reality.

Allegations become facts, and facts become truth in the eyes of the public, whether they are true or not.

Everybody has a good idea, but nothing goes as planned.

Don't ever believe what you see in films.

When I left college, nobody expected much of me - and nor did I.

I always see those of whom I have heard well with a slight disappointment. They are so much better than the great herd, and yet the heavens are not shivered into diamonds over their heads.

Mind the gap - it's the distance between life as you dream it and life as it is.

God, how that stings! I've spent a lifetime loving science fiction and now I find that you must expect nothing of something that's just science fiction.

People are disappointed that you aren't exactly who they thought you were, as opposed to somebody who's just walking around trying to get some laundry done.

Noise ain't Truth, Noise is what men want to be true, and there's a difference twixt those two things so big that it could ruddy well kill you if you don't watch out.

Gee, this isn't like I imagined it would be in the bathtub.

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.

But don't think that it's a system or a culture or a state or a person that does the letting down. It's our expectations that let us down. It begins in the warmth of the womb and the discovery that it's cold outside. But it's not the cold's fault that it's cold.