Being different conditions you toward cautiousness, even as it demands being bold. - Michelle Obama

See, the truth is that if Princeton hadn’t found my brother as a basketball recruit, and if I hadn’t seen that he could succeed on a campus like that, it never would have occurred to me to apply to that school — never. And I know that there are so many kids out there just like me — kids who have a world of potential, but maybe their parents never went to college or maybe they’ve never been encouraged to believe they could succeed there.

The lesson being that in life you control what you can.

I was deeply, delightfully in love with a guy whose forceful intellect and ambition could possibly end up swallowing mine.