“You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.”

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.

And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.

Don’t be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered.

Good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt.

failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result.

I was deeply, delightfully in love with a guy whose forceful intellect and ambition could possibly end up swallowing mine.

If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.

The realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know.

Focus on what you can control. Be a good person every day. Vote. Read. Treat one another kindly. Follow the law. Don’t tweet nasty stuff.

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.

Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

If in doubt, move decisions up to the President.

No one can decide what you should do, what course of action you should take to get where you wanna go, except for yourself.

Our interpretations reflect our imperfections. We will always read between the lines, but we decide what we choose to find.

Those who made the decisions with imperfect knowledge will be judged in hindsight by those with considerably more information at their disposal and time for reflection.

If chess is about the decisive battle, wei qi is about the protracted campaign. The chess player aims for total victory. The wei qi player seeks relative advantage.

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.