Michelle Obama

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, black young women playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.

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.’

My last year in high school, I worked at a bindery, side by side with grown-ups who had been there their entire lives. Knowing that I, as a 16-year-old, was getting the same income and doing the same work… it gave me respect for those workers. But it also gave me an understanding that more is needed for folks to be able to cobble together a decent life on minimum wage.

I’ve seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.

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.

Success isn’t about how much money you make. It’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.

Do not just look at your boyfriend as just a boyfriend. Look at him as a friend, too.

I probably didn’t handle things as diplomatically as I should.

True friends stab you in the front.

I think men are afraid to be with a successful woman, because we are terribly strong, we know what we want and we are not fragile enough.

Dear Ladies: You should never need to prove to other women that he’s in love with you. That’s his job.

Certain guys tell me they want women of substance, not beautiful models. It just means they can’t get beautiful models.

Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged only in private– though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh.

Robert Pattinson should not take back Kristen Stewart. She cheated on him like a dog and will do it again – just watch. He can do much better!

Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep burning, unquenchable.

No one is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.

Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.

I’ve always said, ‘If you need Viagra, you’re probably with the wrong girl.

Men fall in love with their eyes. Women fall in love with their ears.

I only f**k with people who are secure enough to be happy for me and hype me up. I don’t want any ‘friends’ who fall silent during my success.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.