“I was determined to be someone who told the truth, using my voice to lift up the voiceless when I could, and to not disappear on people in need. I understood that when I showed up somewhere,”

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.

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?

My period days didn’t make me falter: they made me more determined to pursue my dreams.

Not what you possess but what you do with what you have, determines your true worth.

I am more convinced than ever that mindsets toward learning could matter more than anything else we teach.

If you work with determination and with perfection, success will follow.

Only when you dream it you can do it.

I love where I’m from. I don’t live there because of the circumstances, but all my family is there. It’s what’s inside, it’s not what’s outside that determines the culture and the feeling.

Your life today is a result of your thinking yesterday. Your life tomorrow will be determined by what you think today.

Your attitude determines your altitude. It really is true that If you think you can, you can; and if you think you can’t – you’re right.