“The First Lady is going to be criticized no matter what she does.”

I think togetherness is a very important ingredient to family life.

I hate abortions, but just could not make that choice for someone else.

I may be the only mother in America who knows exactly what their child is up to all the time.

I love talking to people, but what I really love is to feel you’re doing something instead of sitting home and twiddling your thumbs.

Family and friends and faith are the most important things in your life and you should be building friendships.

I don’t like attacking.

I’m not going to jump out of airplanes or anything like someone else I know.

Nancy Reagan was a perfectionist, and I am not.

You may think the president is all-powerful, but he is not. He needs a lot of guidance from the Lord.

Giving frees us from the familiar territory of our own needs by opening our mind to the unexplained worlds occupied by the needs of others.

I mean you can learn how to build a bullet or build a gun or build a bomb on the Internet.

And who knows? Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President’s spouse. I wish him well!

I’m worried about parents who aren’t parenting.

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.

You have to love your children unselfishly. That’s hard. But it’s the only way.

I’m a little old-fashioned.

There are two things: 1) what things one does in the world, and 2) what family one has. There’s the two really tangible things that can stay.

Maybe Oliver Stone doesn’t lend himself well to remakes or sequels, because he does them so well the first time.

It does seem to me that at least some of us have made an idol of exhaustion. The only time we know we have done enough is when we are running on empty and when the ones we love most are the ones we see the least.

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it.

Vengeance does not subtract any numbers from the equation of murder; it only adds them.

Do not turn yourself from an end into a means-one does not justify the other.

Do you know why language manifests itself the way it does in my work? It’s because I understand short attention spans.

It is natural that we should always expect an Israeli attack, even when it does not threaten.