Jill Biden Quotes

We do have funerals for the living," Jill said. "They're called birthday parties.

Good marriages push us—not to become someone else but to become the best version of ourselves.

We do have funerals for the living,” Jill said. “They’re called birthday parties.

This is the truest thing I know: that love makes a family whole. It doesn't matter if you're blending a family with biological and nonbiological children, or healing the wounds of losing a loved one, or inviting an aging parent to live with you. The details may differ, but love is the common denominator.

Oh by the way, that reminds me that I promised Jill that I’d mention our wedding in the book. We got married at some point. Cool, I can check that one off the list.

like the branches of a tree / I am an extension of you / my heart and soul / firmly and effortlessly / embedded in your roots.

Kierkegaard quote, “Faith sees best in the dark,

The Biden's have another belief as well:" If you have to ask, it's too late." When someone is in need, when they're hurting, when they're overwhelmed, you don't wait until they tell you they need your help. You give it before they have to ask. So when Neilia died and Joe was left with two young boys, trying to father them and get through his own grief, all while juggling the new hectic life of a senator, Val didn't ask if there was something she could do. She moved in. And for three years, through her own career ambitions, through her courtship and eventual marriage to her husband, Jack, she lived with Joe and the boys and made sure they had the love and support they needed to keep going.

to say that I saw ways to connect with Americans that Barack and his West Wing advisers didn’t fully recognize, at least initially. Rather than doing interviews with big newspapers or cable news outlets, I began sitting down with influential “mommy bloggers” who reached an enormous and dialed-in audience of women. Watching my young staffers interact with their phones, seeing Malia and Sasha start to take in news and chat with their high school friends via social media, I realized there was opportunity to be tapped there as well. I crafted my first tweet in the fall of 2011 to promote Joining Forces and then watched it zing through the strange, boundless ether where people increasingly spent their time. It was a revelation. All of it was a revelation. With my soft power, I was finding I could be strong. If reporters and television cameras wanted to follow me, then I was going to take them places. They could come watch me and Jill Biden paint a wall, for example, at a nondescript row house in the Northwest part of Washington. There was nothing inherently interesting about two ladies with paint rollers, but it baited a certain hook. It brought everyone to the doorstep of Sergeant Johnny Agbi, who’d been twenty-five years old and a medic in Afghanistan when his transport helicopter was attacked, shattering his spine, injuring his brain, and requiring a long rehabilitation at Walter Reed. His first floor was now being retrofitted to accommodate his wheelchair—its doorways widened, its kitchen sink lowered—part of a joint effort between a nonprofit called Rebuilding Together and the company that owned Sears and Kmart. This was the thousandth such home they’d renovated on behalf of veterans in need. The cameras caught all of it—the soldier, his house, the goodwill and energy being poured in.

There’s a story that’s sometimes called the parable of the long spoons. No one is sure which religion or philosophy it originates from, though it seems to appear as a myth in many traditions. The details change across cultures—spoons, chopsticks, soup, or rice. But the basic points are the same: A man asks God to show him heaven and hell, and God presents to him two rooms. In the first, sickly people sit around a table, and in the center is a gigantic pot of delicious-smelling soup. Each person can reach the pot, but their spoons are so long that there is no way to get them back into their mouths. Each tortured soul struggles in vain to get a bite to eat. They writhe in pain as they fruitlessly ladle and starve. This, of course, is hell. And in the second room is the same table, the same soup, the same terribly long spoons—but this time, the diners, sated and happy, pour spoonfuls of soup into their neighbors’ mouths. In hell, we starve alone. In heaven, we feed each other.

Indeed, Mike Pence at a Manhattan theater is a lot like Michelle Obama attending a NASCAR event in the Deep South. That actually happened in 2011. When the track announcer recognized her and Jill Biden at a race they attended to honor veterans, the crowd showered them with boos, too.

Nana-tucket!

Barack stared at me. “Did you tell Jill you were going out with me?“ “it’s none of her business who I go out with. I’m in the seventh decade of my life – I can do whatever I want. No one is the boss of me.” “I used to be your boss.” “The American people wear our boss.” I told him. “but things have changed.

Couple of weeks back, he was up in New Hampshire—nighttime, a living room, late already and it wasn’t the last event—and some guy stood up and asked Joe about his education. Not his education plan ... his own goddam education, like he wanted to make sure Biden went to college. Anyway, that’s how Joe heard it ... and he blew: he started yelling how he’d graduated with three degrees, went to law school on scholarship, clawed his way up from the bottom of his class—or some bullshit—he offered to compare IQs ... all with the chin out, the hectoring voice, like ... I may be stupid, but I’m Einstein next to you! ... And Ruthie Berry and Jill, who were sitting, resting, in the next room, had to scurry in and steer Joe out of there.

A man asks God to show him heaven and hell, and God presents to him two rooms. In the first, sickly people sit around the table, and in the center is a gigantic pot of delicious smelling soup. Each person can reach the pot, but their spoons ate so long that there is no way to get them back into their mouths. Each tortured soul struggles in vain to get a bite to eat. They writhe in pain as they fruitlessly ladle and starve. This, of course, is hell. And in the second room is the same table, the same soup, the same terribly long spoons--but this time, the diners, sated and happy, pour spoonfuls of soup into their neighbors' mouths. In hell, we starve alone. In heaven, we feed each other. I know two things as I write this: I am not healed, but I am also not alone.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the first Jack and Jill in US history to go up the Capitol Hill to fetch a pail of power.

She saved OUR lives’ with aunt Val standing right next [to you] and never mention her I feel like grabbing the mic and saying she [Jill] may have saved HIS life but Beau and I were pretty happy with Mom Mom [grandmother Jean] and Aunt Val. “Losing Mommy [Neilia] was more like I expect it might be to be born without legs—you know something really really important

A little over a month later, on December 18,1972, I was listening to the radio while driving to campus to take one of my final exams. The announcer broke into programming to say that Joe Biden's wife Neilia, and their thirteen month old daughter, Naomi, had been killed in a car accident earlier that day, on their way home from buying the family's Christmas tree. Their young sons, Beau and Hunter, had been in the car but survived.

With this in mind, I’d started a leadership and mentoring program at the White House, inviting twenty sophomore and junior girls from high schools around Greater D.C. to join us for monthly get-togethers that included informal chats, field trips, and sessions on things like financial literacy and choosing a career. We kept the program largely behind closed doors, rather than thrusting these girls into the media fray. We paired each teen with a female mentor who would foster a personal relationship with her, sharing her resources and her life story. Valerie was a mentor. Cris Comerford, the White House’s first female executive chef, was a mentor. Jill Biden was, too, as were a number of senior women from both the East and the West Wing staffs. The students were nominated by their principals or guidance counselors and would stay with us until they graduated. We had girls from military families, girls from immigrant families, a teen mom, a girl who’d lived in a homeless shelter. They were smart, curious young women, all of them. No different from me. No different from my daughters. I watched over time as the girls formed friendships, finding a rapport with one another and with the adults around them. I spent hours talking with them in a big circle, munching popcorn and trading our thoughts about college applications, body image, and boys. No topic was off-limits. We ended up laughing a lot. More than anything, I hoped this was what they’d carry forward into the future—the ease, the sense of community, the encouragement to speak and be heard. My wish for them was the same one I had for Sasha and Malia—that in learning to feel comfortable at the White House, they’d go on to feel comfortable and confident in any room, sitting at any table, raising their voices inside any group.

Albert Camus: “In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.