Michelle Obama

My habit is at the beginning of the year, I look at a blank calendar and then we put everything for the kids first like potlucks, sporting events, parent-teacher conferences, doctor’s appointments, and vacations. Second is me. When do I want to work out? When do I want to hang out with my girlfriends? What trips do I want to take? When can I take a long weekend? Put that on there. And then once all that’s done, everything else can come around that. It’s amazing because it forces you to say “no” because you’ve already blocked out the time.

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.

I advise young women: Negotiate hard and know your worth.

It was sort of important for us not to deal with a specific policy change, or a specific sort of approach, but to deal with cultural change.

I’m a product of pop culture.

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

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.

I have so much more to go through as a young lady. But oh my God. I feel like I can do anything.

We weren’t wealthy but we definitely weren’t poor. We were incredibly rich because there was a wonderful community in Shepherd’s Bush, where I grew up. All my friends were into villainy and crime.

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

We can aim to create a culture, where kids ask for healthy options instead of resisting them.

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.

I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don’t make up their minds, someone will do it for them.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaken need for an unshakable God.

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

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

When you give directives to a child, especially a teenager, you must consider the nature of your child.

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

The streets and woods around my house were a perfect setting for fake mischief. I would spend all afternoon pretending I had run away and had to live on my own. I would bring Toll House cookies and a sweatshirt and try to make a fire. I would sneak out side my house at dusk with a pair binoculars and search the streets for murderers. I created scenarios in my head that I always managed to escape from kidnap fantasies where I would wriggle free from the ropes.

The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.