Michelle Obama

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

I grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago where most folks, including my parents, didn’t have college degrees. But with a lot of hard work – and a lot of financial aid – I had the chance to attend Princeton and Harvard Law School, and that gave me the confidence to pursue my ambitions.

I always touch people, because I know that there’s a level of anxiety, people are teary or they’re nervous, and I just try to physically hold them and bring them down and say: ‘We’re here. I’m just Michelle.’

Strong men, men who are truly role models, don’t need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful.

At the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.

Oftentimes, it’s the way we react to change that is the thing that determines the overall experience.

Kids instinctively know – although they will argue to the contrary – that they really are not mature enough to make good decisions on some important issues.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

Cotton was a force of nature. There’s a poetry to it, hoeing and growing cotton.

You don’t want to be with a boy who is too stupid to appreciate a smart young lady. There is no boy who is cute enough or interesting enough to stop you from getting your education.

They say that every child learns from their mother – it’s ingrained from babyhood.

To tell the truth I cannot call my childhood bad. In your childhood you can’t compare things: one eats carrots, one eats candy, both taste good. As a child you cannot tell the difference.

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

I was brought up in a very ordinary family, in fact, a worker’s family. Both my father and mother were ordinary citizens.

Back when we was in school in Mississippi, we had Little Black Sambo. That’s what you learned: Anytime something was not good, or anytime something was bad in some kinda way, it had to be called black. Like, you had Black Monday, Black Friday, black sheep… Of course, everything else, all the good stuff, is white. White Christmas and such.

[Postpartum depression] is something that’s completely uncontrollable. It’s really painful and it’s really scary and women need a lot of support.

As a kid, I was making a building with blocks in our playroom. I didn’t have enough. So I asked my younger brother Robert if I could borrow some of his. He said, ‘Okay, but you have to give them back when you’re done.’ I used all of my blocks, then all of his blocks, and when I was done I had a great building, which I then glued together. Robert never did get those blocks back.

Once you’re grown up you can’t come back.

I was born on a plantation, and things weren’t so good. We didn’t have any money. I never thought of the word ‘poor’ ’til I got to be a man, but when you live in a house that you can always peek out of and see what kind of day it is, you’re not doing so well. And your rest room is not inside the house.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

We’re all mad here.