Parenting is the wildest adventure and vocation that can happen to a person. Every day is different and there is no static. So, you have to kind of surrender to the process, which is a hard thing to do for somebody like me who prefers to have order in my life.

Being a father teaches you very quickly that you are not the center of your own universe. That’s one of the gifts of having to wipe poop!

Yeah, I try to make sure Sundays I’m about and present. This weekend he wants to do an apple crumble. We’ll normally do some sort of slow roasting in the morning because we’ll be off to rugby training, and then the afternoon when we get back, it’s all cooked and lovely.

He says that he has the job of his dreams, which is the greatest joy that I can feel, is to have my child say he has the job of his dreams.

Part of what separates us from the other creatures on earth is that we make up stories. We are storytellers. And we can tell bad stories and we can tell good stories. We can tell stories that lead to division and hate and war. Or we can tell stories that lead to cooperation and peace and progress.

The thing actually that I most dislike is cruelty. I can't stand cruel people. And if I see people doing something mean to somebody else, just to make themselves feel important it really gets me mad.

One of the things that Michelle and I are proud of is that we came through the White House with our souls intact. Everybody has heard: Power corrupts. I do think if you are placed in such an artificial situation, and your office has great importance, there is a tendency for people to want to please you. To not be as honest with you. We fought against that.

Scooping ice cream is tougher than it looks. … Rows and rows of rock-hard ice cream can be brutal on the wrists. … I was less interested in what the job meant for my future and more concerned about what it meant for my jump shot.

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.