In the first 33 years of my life which is up until I climbed Everest, I was a very restless and slightly unhappy sort of person. I really didn’t have a great deal of social life, but I’d become very interested in adventurous activities. Perhaps, I was, in some respects something of a loner. But after I got married, that certainly changed my life very considerably, indeed. I found that it was possible to mix having a family with continuing on with adventurous activities, but I think a great deal of that was having a suitable wife. My wife was very, long-suffering. She knew that there were certain things I wanted to do and she was happy that I should do them. She was prepared to put up with considerable periods of being alone with the kids. She, was marvelous, so it made it possible for me to do the things that I wanted to do as well.

When I am on my deathbed, and I am thinking back on my life, I am absolutely certain that the thing I will be thinking about is holding my daughters' hands and taking them to the park. It will not be some speech I gave or some legislation that I passed. I am positive about that. And so if you keep that in mind, then you have to invest accordingly.

Security. People naturally resist change in our personal lives. … Malia, actually, was the one who brought it up because she says, 'You know, one of the things that happens is sometimes transitions are hard, and I really enjoy my life, and I like how things are going.' And I said, 'Get in the habit of being able to embrace change, and what's new. Because you don't want to live your life where, you are held back because you've gotten too comfortable, and you are afraid of what might be out there around the corner.'

When I feel as if the people closest to me are happy and healthy and I'm connected with them, and when I feel as if I'm doing things that are making other people better and happy, then I feel real good. That's when I'm at my peak.

There are some things about being president that I still have difficulty doing. … For example, faking emotion. Because I feel it is an insult to the people I'm dealing with. For me to feign outrage, for example, feels to me like I'm not taking the American people seriously. I'm absolutely positive that I'm serving the American people better if I'm maintaining my authenticity. And that's an overused word. And these days people practice being authentic. But I'm at my best when I believe what I am saying.

You'll see I wear only gray or blue suits. … I'm trying to pare down decisions. I don't want to make decisions about what I'm eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make. … You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can't be going through the day distracted by trivia.

Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency sometimes to make excuses for me not doing the right thing.