Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

Things do not change; we change.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

I always entertain the notion that I’m wrong, or that I’ll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.

Live the life you’ve dreamed.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

I’ve only wanted paper and beautiful colors. It was my dream, and it still is my dream. And books. They’re all I need, and the rest I can do without.

Why go through life if you’re not going to challenge yourself?

Fame is ultimately about the cycles of desire and how to do away with them or manage them well.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief… All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.

Every movie I make teaches me something. That’s why I keep making them.

That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

There’s a lot of rednecks in the country where I grew up.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

To add value to others, one must first value others.

I was definitely very much a country boy.

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

However happy people say they are, nobody is satisfied: we always have to be with the prettiest woman, buy a bigger house, change cars, desire what we do not have.

Men must know their limitations.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

We’re all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.

I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

When you face a ‚performance‘ that might provoke the ‚I’m scared‘ response, choose love and approach your opportunity as a chance to dance with God. It’s more fun than ‚Dancing with the Stars!‘

The fact is that since you’re a divine creation who originated in the world of Spirit, you have exactly the right amount of smarts to accomplish all that you need and want to do while you’re here on earth. It’s all perfect… and so are you!

I have a personal ambition to live my life honestly and honor the true love that I’ve had and also the people I’ve had around me.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

For me, education was power.

Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can’t move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.

I don’t know that you can put a label on growth. I’m just me.

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

One of the things I definitely think of as a driver of me is fear. And it’s fear of failure, fear of being overtaken.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

Mothers and daughters generally have fairly complex relationships, and ours was made much more so by Mother’s illness. She had Parkinson’s disease, which was not diagnosed for a long time… All that made me very self-protective, because for one thing, I didn’t want to get trapped.

When you are young you tend to do so many things that are not needed. When you get experience, you know what exactly what works for you and you tend to do things that you want.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up – they have no holidays.