Quotes from Barack Obama

Behind me, Billie was on her last song. I picked up the refrain, humming a few bars. Her voice sounded different to me now. Beneath the layers of hurt, beneath the ragged laughter, I heard a willingness to endure. Endure—and make music that wasn't there before.

I found god in myself and I loved her / I loved her fiercely           Lights

You might have told him that these instruments carried with them a dangerous power, that they demanded a different way of seeing the world. That this power could be absorbed only alongside a faith born out of hardship, a faith that wasn't new, that wasn't black or white or Christian or Muslim but that pulsed in the heart of the first African village and the first Kansas homestead—a faith in other people.

And under the fanning shade of the mango tree, as hands wove black curls into even rows, I heard all our voices begin to run together, the sound of three generations tumbling over each other like the currents of a slow-moving stream, my questions like rocks roiling the water, the breaks in memory separating the currents, but always the voices returning to that single course, a single story Ã¢â'¬Â¦.

Still, I strongly resisted the idea of offering up my past in a book, a past that left me feeling exposed, even slightly ashamed.

the notion of grace as a recognition that we are fundamentally flawed and weak and confused. We don't deserve grace, but we get it sometimes.

Chicago, a town that's accustomed to its racial wounds and prides itself on a certain lack of sentiment.

As a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit.

Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up.

Finally, there are the dangers inherent in any autobiographical work: the temptation to color events in ways favorable to the writer, the tendency to overestimate the interest one's experiences hold for others

inexhaustible...our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God.

We are made for this moment, and we will seize it-so long as we seize it together.

I was impatient in those days, busy with work and unrealized plans, and prone to see other people as unnecessary distractions.

I'd never once heard her dwell on the disappointments. Instead she seemed to find small pleasures everywhere.

I was intrigued by old Frank, with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes.

Don't be thick, all right? I'm not just talking about one time. Look, I ask Monica out, she says no. I say okay … your shit's not so hot anyway.

Glory and tragedy, courage and stupidity—one set of truths didn't negate the other. For war was contradiction, as was the history of America.

Whenever I first reached them on the phone, they would often be suspicious or evasive, uncertain as to why this Muslim—or worse yet, this Irishman, O'Bama—wanted a few minutes of their time.

Unfortunately, too many of our schools depend on inexperienced teachers with little training in the subjects they're teaching, and too often those teachers are concentrated in already struggling schools.

unhappy with any presumption that all whites were racist, or that their own fears and day-to-day struggles were less valid.

As I chewed on the gooey popcorn, looking out at the lake, calm and turquoise now, I tried to recall a more contented moment

hadn't yet gotten either item through Congress—mainly because, on my very first day in office, I hadn't had the foresight to tell Harry Reid and the rest of the Senate Democrats to revise the chamber rules and get rid of the filibuster once and for all.

I thought I could start over, you see. But now I know you can never start over. Not really. You think you have control, but you are like a fly in somebody else's web.

wish I had your optimism. Sometimes I do. But people can be so selfish and just plain ignorant. I think a lot of people don't want to be bothered. And I think politics seems like it's full of people willing to do anything for power, who just think about themselves.