Michelle Obama

You know, it’s the silliness in me. It has always been there. I love to make people laugh. It comes from my family. My family is funny.

When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high.

I’m using the term “First Spouse” instead of First Lady because I believe we will have a woman president.

When I get up and work out, I’m working out just as much for my girls as I am for me, because I want them to see a mother who loves them dearly, who invests in them, but who also invests in herself. It’s just as much about letting them know as young women that it is okay to put yourself a little higher on your priority list.

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

I view myself as being the average woman.

When I’m happier and healthier, my family is happier and healthier, and it affects how I interact with my friends and the people I work with.

There are a few things that were just sheer, unadulterated joy, like the birth of my children.

I met with my lawyers. They gave me all the wrong advice. For a long time I refused to accept the child was mine. I should have met her, arranged a DNA test and accepted my responsibility.

I know what it’s like to be married and to live in a house with a garden, but it’s not something I’m striving for at the moment.

There’s a reason why people who’ve had bad relationships with their parents listen to angry stuff.

My father was very energetic; my mother was very energetic. He lived to a very old age, and so did my mother. I believe that I just have it from my father, from my parents. They had wonderful energy.

I was probably 10 or 11 when I saw that, and sort of started thinking, ‘You know what? Marriage is an option. Having a family is an option. And going to school and getting your education and building your career is another really viable option that can lead to happiness and fulfillment.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

I didn’t want to disrespect my parents, so I never played blues around the house. But I knew then, same as I know today, that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I think that before they died, they both felt very proud of me.

I am lucky because my family are comfortably off. My father has his own glass business.

Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.

Nothing can stop me from loving my brother.

Your children can be around you all day, but if you don’t spend quality time with them and you don’t pay attention to them and talk to them and listen to them, it doesn’t matter that they’re just around you.

My father was a perfectionist. We had to hop to everything and have marvelous table manners. I could only wear navy blue and gray and white. He wanted me to be interested in tennis and horses just like a little princess, but I couldn’t stand such things.

[Babies are] a loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.