Michelle Obama

In fact, in the last job I had before coming to the White House - I remember this clearly - I was on maternity leave with Sasha, still trying to figure out what to do with my life, and I got a call for an interview for this position, a senior position at the hospitals. And I thought, okay, here we go. So I had to scramble to look for babysitting, and couldn\'t find one.

I\'ve always tried to make sure that what I do really connects with the broader agenda of what my husband Barack Obama is trying to do.... But I also find that I have to be very passionate myself about the issue to be able to represent it well. One of the big issues that I\'ve talked a lot about...is childhood health, nutrition and obesity.

We have had with Barack Obama some just amazing experiences traveling abroad, being able to introduce our children to the world.... I\'m also humbled by the response and the receptiveness, not just here in America, but around the world. There\'s a part of that warmth and enthusiasm and hope that is surprising and humbling.

My role models were the people in my life. My mom, for sure. My dad. The teachers. For me, role-modeling was immediate, it was touchable. It was rare for me to idolize a movie star or a singer...because, truly, children connect with who is in their lives, present and accounted for.

One reason we planted the White House vegetable garden was to set an example about what food can mean, but to also begin a broader conversation about how we\'re feeding our kids, what they know about the food that they eat, how they\'re taking care of themselves.

I talk about the food issue, I\'m really coming at it from pre-White House times, when I was a working mother with a busy husband, a very demanding job and two little kids to feed.... I had to learn what it means to feed and care for your kids in a country where fast food is abundant, where time is a rarity, where eating out is a trend, because families are so busy.... Yes, I\'m First Lady, but I know the struggles.

After I got out of law school and worked in a big law firm, I thought, there are so many kids like me, in my neighborhood, that could be here if they had more support from their families, better financial aid. But the gap is so wide once you miss that opportunity. So I was always interested in figuring out, How do you bridge that? I felt, as a lawyer, when I was mentoring and working with kids, that I gained a level of groundedness that I just couldn\'t get sitting on the forty-seventh floor of a fancy firm.

Fruits and vege for some kids are scary and not fun.

Even in these tough economic times, Barack [Obama] has left the VA budget as is so that they\'re prepared to deal with this influx of men and women who are coming home and dealing with a whole array of issues, not just around mental health but just caregiving and the stresses of reconnecting with families who have been away from each other for a very long time.

It is our fundamental belief in the power of hope that has allowed us to rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear that we have faced in our own lives and in the life of America.

I think any family would, any mother would their children.

It should be fun introducing kids to fruits and vege. If you start young, it will be something that they\'ll attach to really quickly.

We don\'t need new discoveries or new inventions to reverse this trend. We have the tools at our disposal to reverse it. All we need is the motivation, the opportunity and the willpower to do what needs to be done. ...With this report, we have a very solid road map that we need to make these goals real, to solve this problem within a generation.

One of the things I want ... all the kids here to remember, is that these [Major League Soccer] stars were not born superstar athletes ... Many of them started out just like many of you-playing on a team at school, or just kicking a ball around on the playground with their friends. But they stuck with it. And I tell this to my girls all the time. I mean, you get to the point when ... things you enjoy ... start getting hard-that\'s when you know you\'re getting good, and you have to stick through it.

We\'re gathering a group of women around the administration to serve over a longer period of time as mentors to girls in need. If we can have that kind of impact in one night, just imagine if we were working with girls over the course of a year or two.... We can change lives.

Truly 1 percent of this country serves and protects the freedoms of the other 99 percent of us, so many of us don\'t have that connection. Fortunately, Jill Biden does. She\'s a blue-star mom. Their son was in the National Guard - or is in the - in - is a Reservist.

Gardening has increased, community gardens have increased significantly. There are 50 percent more community gardens right here in Washington DC.

There are so many really good role models out there, we just have to make sure that we don\'t glorify just one type. We have the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, who is ready to be a force in kids\' lives. I could name hundreds of people like her.

People are always going to have opinions, and people have a right to their opinions, particularly when you\'re the First Lady; you\'re representing the nation. I\'ve tried to be at peace with the choices that I make first, and then be open to everyone else\'s reflection.

My view is that if you can\'t run your own house, you certainly can\'t run the White House. Can\'t do it.

We\'ve gotten commitments from medical schools, from nursing schools, to step up and increase that pool of knowledgeable individuals.

You do not keep American democracy in suspense. Because, look, too many people have marched and protested and fought and died for this democracy.

And that\'s why the president has asked the entire government to step up, on his part. I mean, there\'s - there are things that the private sector needs to do; there are things that the government needs to do.

That\'s where you just have to get creative. There are all these trampoline parks and there\'s bowling and there\'s roller skating.

Start, as parents, with yourselves, number one.

We\'re starting to see, as the economy improves, that the unemployment rate among veterans and military spouses - we\'re seeing some improvement in those numbers. And that\'s a good thing.

We\'re our kids\' first and best role models. So the first question is, what are you as a mom or a dad doing every day, or every week, to start getting into the good habits?

Let Girls Learn issue has always been personal for me. I grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago where most folks, including my parents, didn\'t have college degrees. But with a lot of hard work - and a lot of financial aid - I had the chance to attend Princeton and Harvard Law School, and that gave me the confidence to pursue my ambitions.

Know that America belongs to you, to all of you.

Barack Obama was always special, you know? And not special, like, He\'s gonna be important, he\'s gonna be president. He was special in terms of his honesty, his sincerity, his compassion for other people.