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a happy marriage can be a vexation, that it’s a contract best renewed and renewed again, even quietly and privately—even alone.

Michelle Obama

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.
MICHELLE OBAMA

End Grow Up Yourself
But as I’ve said, failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result. And for me, it felt like that’s exactly what she was planting—a suggestion of failure long before I’d even tried to succeed.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Failure Feeling Myself Plant Result Success
Bullies were scared people hiding inside scary people.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Fear Hide Mental People
Here’s a memory, which like most memories is imperfect and subjective—collected long ago like a beach pebble and slipped into the pocket of my mind.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Collection Imperfection Memories Mindset
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.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Alone Carry Challenge Change Deserve Existence History Remember See Tolerance
Marriage, he told me early on, struck him as an unnecessary and overhyped convention.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Himself Marriage Necessary
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.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Beginning Beyond Hope Myself Place Understand
I have had to learn that my voice has value. And if I don’t use it, what’s the point of being in the room?
MICHELLE OBAMA

Learning Myself Value Voice
I hate diversity workshops. Real change comes from having enough comfort to be really honest and say something very uncomfortable.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Comfortable Hate Honesty Myself
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.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Friendship Goodness Hurt Life Marriage People Relationship Right Trust
Now that I’m an adult, I realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults aren’t invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness. It’s hardly their fault. They aren’t bad kids. They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Age Children Enough Investment Myself Survive Young
We should always have three friends in our lives-one who walks ahead who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we’ve cleared the way.
MICHELLE OBAMA

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

Book Himself Money
Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best things to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we’re doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change
MICHELLE OBAMA

Change Focus Live Photograph Reality
For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Achievement End Growth Journey Myself See
When you’re First Lady, America shows itself to you in its extremes.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Limitation Yourself
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.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Character Life People Relationship Respect Value Word
[Y]ou may live in the world as it is, but you can still work to create the world as it should be.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Creation Live World Yourself
This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path–the my-isn’t-that-impressive- path– and keep you there for a long time.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Care Fundamental Problem Thinking Time
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.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Husband Myself Photograph Smile
My most important title is still mom-in-chief. My daughters are still the heart of my heart and the center of my world.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Heart Important Mom World
And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Human Myself Willing
I wasn’t going to let one person’s opinion dislodge everything I thought I knew about myself. Instead, I switched my method without changing my goal.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Change Goal Inspirational Myself Person
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?
MICHELLE OBAMA

Moments Myself See
They didn’t own a house. We were their investment, me and Craig. Everything went into us.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Home Investment
I grew up with a disabled dad in a too-small house with not much money in a starting-to-fail neighborhood, and I also grew up surrounded by love and music in a diverse city in a country where an education can take you far. I had nothing or I had everything. It depends on which way you want to tell it.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Education Failure Grow Up Love Money Music Myself Start
Inspiration on its own was shallow; you had to back it up with hard work.
MICHELLE OBAMA

Inspirational Shallow Success

a happy marriage can be a vexation, that it’s a contract best renewed and renewed again, even quietly and privately—even alone.

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a happy marriage can be a vexation, that it’s a contract best renewed and renewed again, even quietly and privately—even alone.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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