Michelle Obama

uties as a precinct captain. Beyond this, I wasn’t much needed, and that suited me perfectly. I could treat campaigning like a hobby, picking it up when it was convenient, having some fun with it, and then getting back to

Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up?

tamed his nerves

The lesson being that in life you control what you can

imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.

just wanted to achieve. Or maybe I didn’t want to be dismissed as incapable of achieving.

But as I’ve said, failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result.

Here’s a memory, which like most memories is imperfect and subjective—collected long ago like a beach pebble and slipped into the pocket of my mind.

find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice.