“And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, like you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say you’re going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.”

When you’re First Lady, America shows itself to you in its extremes.

Bullies were scared people hiding inside scary people.

I’ve learned that it’s harder to hate up close.

The choice, as he saw it, was this: You give up or you work for change. What’s better for us? Barack called to the people gathered in the room. Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?

You don’t really know how attached you are until you move away, until you’ve experienced what it means to be dislodged, a cork floating on the ocean of another place.

Time, as far as my father was concerned, was a gift you gave to other people.

I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.

It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does.

His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind.

We were planting seeds of change, the fruit of which we might never see. We had to be patient.

It’s easier to hold onto your own stereotypes and misconceptions, it makes you feel justified in your own ignorance. That’s America. So the challenge for us is, are we ready for change?

For me, marriage was more like a full-on merger, a reconfiguring of two lives into one, with the well-being of a family taking precedence over any one agenda or goal.

there’s no straight line between effort and reward.

You find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice.

No one, I realized, was going to look out for me unless I pushed for it.

My daughters are the heart of my heart and the center of my world.

Through your rags I see your vanity.

I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.

Men can be divided into 2 groups: one that goes ahead and achieves something, and one that comes after and criticizes.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence

As was his language so was his life.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.