“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 stick place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.

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.

Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.

The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.

just do what works for you, because there will always be someone who thinks differently.

Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child – What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.

People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.

I just wanted to achieve. Or maybe I didn’t want to be dismissed as incapable of achievement.

Am I good enough? Yes, I am.

Even white people were recognizing him now.

I’ve smiled for photos with people who call my husband horrible names on national television, but still want a framed keepsake for their mantel.

Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts, good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt. They’re not painful. That’s not just with somebody you want to marry, but it’s with the friends that you choose. It’s with the people you surround yourselves with.

Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this, I’d never forgive him.

Even if we didn’t know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.

Look how I’m managing, I wanted to say in those moments, to my audience of no one. Does everyone see that I’m pulling this off?

In my blinding drive to excel, in my need to do things perfectly, I’d missed the signs and taken the wrong road.

My dad was like a stage mother he always pushed me to do what I wanted.

My mother and father didn’t know anything about instruments. Me just see a man in the country play guitar one time and say, ‘My, the man play that guitar nice.’

I am in agreement with everything my father taught me and nothing my mother taught me.

Though my father was Norwegian, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English.

It’s not the men in your life that matters, it’s the life in your men.

With my kids, they’re told 75 times a day that they’re loved.

Even when I was rebelling against my father, the point was to follow my own intuition and instinct.

It’s natural that anyone is compared to their father.