William Butler Yeats Quotes

At 30 I thought my life was over. I thought I'd have made something of myself by then, that life would somehow have made the necessary arrangements - but actually I had nothing.

I mean, I had probably an illusion of being the wife that, you know, I wanted to create a home. I wanted to have children. I wanted him to be a husband. It was never going to be that way. It couldn't be that way.

My character, Rick Spleen, is a what-if version of me, really, where nothing did quite turn out right and everything else is still around the corner.

What I wanted and what I visualized while composing has not always been realized.

It's a source of great sadness to me that my father died without having seen me do anything worthwhile. He was constantly having to make excuses for me.

Their lives have been largely defined by failure and you would think the prospect of marriage, which is supposed to be bountiful and hopeful, it's just really another kind of tangential thing in his life.

So many years of preparation, for what was called adult life: was it for this?

My dreams have become puny with the reality my life has become.

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?

I should have been deliriously happy. I had my dream come true. I'm a best-selling author. So why is everything in my life, including my writing, going bad?

The idea that you have a vision of what you're supposed to be, or going to be, or where your kids are going to be - and that that doesn't work out - is always going to be something that's going to affect people and move people.

Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.

The tragedy of life is not that man loses but that he almost wins.

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

I thought 'The Well' was going to launch my career, but nothing happened.

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

The attempt and not the deed confounds us.

If somebody sent me a good script, I would do it, and I mean that, but it never happens. Not once. I can't even point to an exception.

Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer and then you find there is nothing in it.

I intended to be famous by the time I was 16 and rich by the time I was 20. Curiously, it didn't pan out!

I thought nothing would ever happen for me. My whole life had been geared toward being a singer, and it wasn't clicking.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

I've dated people who I thought were going to be a big deal in my life, and I've also spent long periods by myself.

I was sure I'd set the world on fire, and it was hard for a young feller like me to realize the truth - that I hadn't set the world on fire, and I was totally unprepared to handle the consequences if 'The Big Trail' had been a success and launched me as a star.

You were always told that if you worked hard, you would get somewhere. But so many people feel they have worked hard and they have nothing to show for it.