Breaking Expectations Quotes

True genius does not fulfill expectations; true genius shatters it.

I've spent twenty-eight years doing what everyone around me expected me to do...being what everyone around me has expected me to be. And it's horrid to be someone else's vision of yourself.

It's so easy to get into the same routine. A novel every two years; perhaps, improving technique. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in doing something fundamentally important--and therefore, it needs time. And what I've been doing, really, is avoiding this pressure to get into the habit of one novel a year. This is what is expected of novelists. And I have never been really too much concerned with doing what is expected of novelists, or writers, or artists. I want to do what I believe is important.

If you truly expect to realize your dreams, abandon the need for blanket approval. If conforming to everyone's expectations is the number one goal, you have sacrificed your uniqueness, and therefore your excellence.

Whenever I go to any particular event, people are shocked that I'm a fighter. To be a fighter, I have to look a certain way, and to be an actress, I have to look a certain way. I have to change that; I've joined acting to do meaningful cinema and to show that there is much more than glamour that actresses can offer.

I want to go to places that are unexpected of me, because people really think they have me pegged. I want to do something different, like maybe do a space movie or a musical.

The key is to constantly keep the audience surprised. If they feel like something is going to happen, or they think from an educational standpoint that something is about to happen because of all the moving parts, it is your job to break that expectation and show the audience something different.

I'd like to never be able to get pigeonholed, which is difficult to do.

If you live your life only following the path you think is approved or acceptable, or the one you think is expected of you, you’ll be making a huge mistake. Not a single successful person… has ever done great things because they played it safe. You’ve got to be true to yourself.

I love strange choices. I'm always interested in people who depart from what is expected of them and go into new territory.

When I decided to become an actress, I think I let some people down. It was a kind of rebellion.

I was from a small town, and nobody really expects you to leave, especially before you graduate. That doesn't happen.

I'm always looking to play the part that people don't think of me in.

The joy of making a genre film is that you have audiences in that place, and it's a perfect place to start because all it takes is finding ways to startle them out of that complacency and encourage a different kind of engagement.

The moment people feel they know what to expect from you, your spell on them is broken.

No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and the wear out their brains learning what folks expect, and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks.

Laughter lifts our spirits, surprises and sometime shocks our expectations, allows us to cross boundaries, reorders our priorities, and gives us access to ideas and associations we rarely ever thought to have.

When you're trying to do character work that's different from what people expect from you, you're sort of in territory that is uncharted, and you don't know how it's playing all the time.

Every time I break out of what is expected of me and do what feels right, I feel stronger.