The people there, the community, the lessons that I learned -- they're all based right in this few square miles where we'll now be able to give something back and bring the world back home after this incredible journey.

My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn't, couldn't end there. At least that's what I would choose to believe.

If you're an American and you are, you know, subscribing to the ideals and the creed and the values that we believe in as a country, you know, then we don't have a religious test in this country.

Today we continue a never ending journey to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time.

One of the things that you come pretty early on to understand in this job, and you start figuring out even during the course of the campaign, is that there's Barack Obama the person and there's Barack Obama the symbol, or the office holder, or what people are seeing on television, or just a representative of power. And so when people criticize or respond negatively to me, usually they're responding to this character that they're seeing on TV called Barack Obama, or to the office of the presidency and the White House and what that represents.

Right around my first year of college - I remember "Song of Solomon," by Toni Morrison, just moved me tremendously. The power of language and how it can peel back truths, bring things to the surface. So I learned a lot from fiction.

We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.