When you’re First Lady, America shows itself to you in its extremes.
MICHELLE OBAMAWhen you’re First Lady, America shows itself to you in its extremes.
MICHELLE OBAMAIn my blinding drive to excel, in my need to do things perfectly, I’d missed the signs and taken the wrong road.
MICHELLE OBAMAIt’s remarkable how a stereotype functions as an actual trap. How many angry black women have been caught in the circular logic of that phrase? When you aren’t being listened to, why wouldn’t you get louder? If you’re written off as angry or emotional, doesn’t that just cause more of the same?
MICHELLE OBAMAFor 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.
MICHELLE OBAMAWe live by the paradigms we know.
MICHELLE OBAMABut 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 OBAMAWe were planting seeds of change, the fruit of which we might never see. We had to be patient.
MICHELLE OBAMADon’t be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered.
MICHELLE OBAMAOne 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.
MICHELLE OBAMAHis money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind.
MICHELLE OBAMAFor 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 OBAMANow 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 OBAMAIt was possible, I knew, to live on two planes at once—to have one’s feet planted in reality but pointed in the direction of progress.
MICHELLE OBAMAFriendships between women, as any woman will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses, swapped back and forth and over again.
MICHELLE OBAMAI like the idea of being rigorous about friendship.
MICHELLE OBAMAWhen they go low, we go high.
MICHELLE OBAMA