Donna Tartt Quotes

Sometimes you get lucky and things are as easy as you had imagined, but that's rarely the case.

I think that no relationship goes completely according to plan or the way you wished it had.

It's something you hope doesn't happen. When you sign on to do a job, you hope you'll be able to get it done. But that's not always in your control.

The joys we expect are not so bright, nor the troubles so dark as we fancy they will be.

… minor incidents—the kind you can never really foresee—combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls short of the intended goal.

You're not always going to have a perfect day. You're not always going to have the day that you envision.

Life sometimes doesn't work out exactly as we plan or hope for.

I had amazing stuff happen right off the top. I thought this was how it worked. Hollywood is awesome! Cut to three years later: What happened?

Things we do not expect, happen more frequently than we wish.

In the course of the reform, some new circumstances that we had not anticipated have appeared.

What you think is going to be a big break or opportunity can sometimes turn into the opposite, and vice versa.

In life and in movies, it's a similar challenge, where you have expectations, and you end up in situations that are not meeting your expectations.

Nothing ever goes as planned in China.

There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip.

Reality in the end proves unmanageable. It breaks in upon man’s conceptions, changes them, and finally destroys them.

People's lives often don't turn out as they expect.

Great power is setting a goal, working hard for it, and achieving it in exactly the way you expected with no consequences and no remainders after the long division is done. But does that happen to anyone? The unexpected always hitches a ride along with everything you planned.

I've had many songs where I've gone, 'Oh, my God, this song is going to be huge!' but it wasn't the right artist, or something just didn't happen. It didn't make the song any worse. It just didn't line up. That does happen.

While most of the things you've worried about have never happened, it's a different story with the things you haven't worried about. They are the ones that happen.

How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.

Life isn't what it's like in the movies.

People are impatient. They want things to happen overnight, and have no idea of the circumstances and situations that can surround an individual at times.

I'm always surprised by things that happen to my work.

You know, nothing is ever happily-ever-after. Ever.

You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in - in 2007, we just didn't know it was uncertain. It was - uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn't know it.