As a kid, you learn to measure long before you understand the size or value of anything. Eventually, if you’re lucky, you learn that you’ve been meas… - Michelle Obama

[Barack's] always asking: "Is that new? I haven’t seen that before." It’s like, why don’t you mind your own business? Solve world hunger. Get out of my closet.

minority and underprivileged students rise to the challenge all the time — but it takes energy. It takes energy to be the only black person in a lecture hall or one of a few nonwhite people trying out for a play or joining an intramural team. It requires effort, an extra level of confidence, to speak in those settings and own your presence in the room. Which is why when my friends and I found one another at dinner each night, it was with some degree of relief. It’s why we stayed a long time and laughed as much as we could.

It was possible, I knew, to live on two planes at once — to have one’s feet planted in reality but pointed in the direction of progress.