Expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.

Expectation wasn't just about what people expected of you. It was about what you expected of yourself.

Only expectation has value as currency,

For glory lit, and life alive, for goals unreached and aims to strive. All men must try, the wind did see. It is the test, it is the dream.

Sometimes the price of dreams is achieving them.

Did she ever feel nostalgia for any of her girlhood dreams? But life was made up of a succession of dreams, some few to be realized, most to be set aside as time went on, one or two to persist for a lifetime. It was knowing when to abandon a dream, perhaps, that mattered and distinguished the successful people in life from the sad, embittered persons who never moved on from the first of life's great disappointments. Or from the airy dreamers who never really lived life at all.