Jenna Bush Hager Quotes

And although some of my agents were really handsome, I never fell in love with them. I'm also quite sure that none of them ever fell for me; I was twenty and my photos made regular appearances in the National Enquirer.

Thank you for seeing that all the women you love deserve to be free of the shame and distraction that might otherwise keep us from enjoying the blessings of this life.

There’s nothing you can do to make me stop loving you, so stop trying so hard.” I

It isn’t courageous to do the right thing.

For we are given power not to advance our own purposes, nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

Words of wisdom: Always photograph your hitcher. Rome was the first place I created an identity apart from my sister.

When my grandfather went to war against Saddam Hussein after the invasion of Kuwait, he wrote a heartfelt letter to my dad about his worries and his fears. I remember the yellow ribbons tied around the trees throughout our suburban Texas neighborhood, and my dad remembers the gravity of the words his father penned: “I guess what I want you to know as a father is this: Every Human life is precious. When the question is asked ‘How many lives are you willing to sacrifice’—it tears at my heart. The answer, of course, is none—none at all.” When my dad was weighing whether to go to war against Iraq, when intelligence reports were telling him that Iraq had chemical weapons and when Saddam Hussein refused to allow weapons inspectors into his country, he wrote his own heartfelt letter to Barbara and me: “Yesterday I made the hardest decision a president has to make. I ordered young Americans into combat. It was an emotional moment for me because I fully understand the risks of war. More than once, I have hugged and wept with the loved ones of a soldier lost in combat in Afghanistan.” His words spoke of how much he didn’t want to go to war, how he had hoped the battle could be averted.

Mother-daughter relationships can be complicated and fraught with the effects of moments from the past. My mom knew this and wanted me to know it too. On one visit home, I found an essay from the Washington Post by the linguistics professor Deborah Tannen that had been cut out and left on my desk. My mom, and her mom before her, loved clipping newspaper articles and cartoons from the paper to send to Barbara and me. This article was different. Above it, my mom had written a note: “Dear Benny”—I was “Benny” from the time I was a toddler; the family folklore was that when we were babies, a man approached my parents, commenting on their cute baby boys, and my parents played along, pretending our names were Benjamin and Beauregard, later shorted to Benny and Bo. In her note, my mom confessed to doing many things that the writer of this piece had done: checking my hair, my appearance. As a teenager, I was continually annoyed by some of her requests: comb your hair; pull up your jeans (remember when low-rise jeans were a thing? It was not a good look, I can assure you!). “Your mother may assume it goes without saying that she is proud of you,” Deborah Tannen wrote. “Everyone knows that. And everyone probably also notices that your bangs are obscuring your vision—and their view of your eyes. Because others won’t say anything, your mother may feel it’s her obligation to tell you.” In leaving her note and the clipping, my mom was reminding me that she accepted and loved me—and that there is no perfect way to be a mother. While we might have questioned some of the things our mother said, we never questioned her love.

America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect. . . . Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don’t represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior. This is a great country. It’s a great country because we share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth.

Dearest Lord Jesus, We pray to you. We approach you with hearts open, hearts tender, hearts hurting. Today, Lord, we thank you that weeping lasts for a night but joy comes in the morning. Rejoicing comes in the morning. Hope comes in the morning. Thank you for being the god of joy. The god who wipes every tear, not just for a moment, but for eternity. We thank you, God, for the “new heaven and new earth” that the prophets saw all those millennia ago. We rejoice in the god who reunites lost loves. Who bandages wounds. Who tends to broken hearts. Who makes right what was wrong and could never be fixed. Whose plan is a final, all-encompassing answer to brokenness, to hurt, to death itself. We pray to the Lord who triumphs, then gives us the victory. We pray with joy because our Lord has the last word. Because this earth cannot contain your heaven. We pray in anticipation and expectation of the eternal joy that awaits us. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

When people ask me how I balance work and small children, I say, “It’s simple. I don’t.

By far, though, the best celebrity encounter either of us ever had belonged to Barbara. She met LeBron James at the Beijing Olympics, and after some joking around, he passed along his number. Henry and I had visions of a Bush-James basketball dynasty. We could see ourselves living comfortably in their guesthouse . . . But just like Justin Timberlake unplugged at the White House, it was not to be. Or, to quote U2, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

When we were rude and disrespectful teenagers, his favorite line was “I love you. There’s nothing you can do to make me stop loving you. So stop trying.

our success as a society depends not on what happens in the White House, but on what happens inside your house.

In a letter to his children, he wrote, “I used to seek broad horizons in life and found plenty. Now I don’t care if I can’t even see Ogunquit. Limited horizons are okay by me just so long as family’s in view.” One