Both/And Quotes

“As a scholar, he certainly believed we should learn from the past, but that it should be a platform for flight, not an immovable weight to which we are chained.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“I have never wavered from the belief that public service is a worthy profession, that the reward is worth the risk, that the stakes are too great to turn away from the calling. That fork in the road, a quarter of a century ago, when I left a family wedding to embark on the great unknown, turned into the most unexpected journey, the next step in a path my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother had cleared for me. It took me to a place that was worth every ounce of effort, commitment, and sacrifice required to get there.

And if I had to choose to do it all over again, I would.

In a heartbeat.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“From Hillary Clinton, I have learned all kinds of things. How to be confident, brave, unfailingly empathetic, future-focused, tough, and gracious. She and I have had countless adventures over the past twenty-five years and who knows what else lies in the future, but I am still certain about one thing. Hillary Clinton would have been an exceptional President of the United States. Maybe one of the best presidents. I say that with even more conviction and resolve today than when I believed it as a starry-eyed young woman.

The overarching quest of her public life has always been how to help every man, woman, and child reach their full potential. That purpose drove every policy rollout, every bill in the Senate, every speech she delivered, every town and country she visited, every book she wrote. Her focus was always how to give each child the opportunity to grow and flourish, every parent the tools to raise healthy, educated children, every person the right to live in dignity, every worker the protections and rights to succeed and thrive. As president, she would have reached across the aisle and forced divergent opinions to the table to help all Americans. She would have served her country, not herself. Maybe it won't happen in her lifetime or mine, but I'm confident that history will remember her as one of the American Greats.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“For a long time, Comey was a daily nightmare for me, and even now the thought of what he did sometimes creeps in to torture me. But I have slowly come to accept that I am not the sole cause of the 2016 election loss. One man's decision to play God forever changed the course of history. It should not be my burden to carry the rest of my life. It should be his.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“On our first night, while I was sitting at one of the plastic tables with Heba, watching our kids splashing in the water, a woman approached me.

"I am sorry to bother you," she said. "I just never thought I would ever meet you in real life. My husband is doing to me now what your husband did." I reached for her hand as she continued with less composure. "And I just want to tell you that the mornings when I don't think I can get out of bed, I think of you. You have given me strength and I want to thank you for it."

I had lost count of the women (and some men too) who had approached me with their stories of personal betrayal, their struggles to decide what to tolerate, whether to stay, when and how to leave, how to navigate this sometimes torturous thing called love. I looked over her shoulder, and saw her husband a short distance away, staring at us. He was a handsome man in a bathing suit, watching over a toddler with arm floaties splashing in the water. To any casual observer, they looked like the perfect family. The 2017 me wanted to tell her to run. Run as fast as she could. But I didn't. For whatever reason, this woman had made a choice to stay—a choice she felt was right for her, and I was not one to stand in judgment. "I am with you," I said before we each went back to our children.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“Then there were those who were thrilling to Senator Sanders, who believed that Bernie would be the one to give them free college, to solve climate change, and even to bring peace to the Middle East, though that was not an issue most people associated with him. On a trip to Michigan, I met with a group of young Muslims, most of them college students, for whom this was the first election in which they planned to participate. I was excited that they had come to hear more about HRC's campaign. One young woman, speaking for her peers, said she really wanted to be excited about the first woman president, but she had to support Bernie because she believed he would be more effective at finally brokering a peace treaty in the Middle East. Everyone around her nodded. I asked the group why they doubted Hillary Clinton's ability to do the same.

"Well, she has done nothing to help the Palestinians."

Taking a deep breath, I asked them if they knew that she was the first U.S. official to ever call the territories "Palestine" in the nineties, that she advocated for Palestinian sovereignty back when no other official would. They did not. I then asked them if they were aware that she brought together the last round of direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians? That she personally negotiated a cease-fire to stop the latest war in Gaza when she was secretary of state? They shook their heads. Had they known that she announced $600 million in assistance to the Palestinian Authority and $300 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza in her first year at State? They began to steal glances at one another. Did they know that she pushed Israel to invest in the West Bank and announced an education program to make college more affordable for Palestinian students? More head shaking. They simply had no idea.

"So," I continued, "respectfully, what is it about Senator Sander's twenty-seven-year record in Congress that suggests to you that the Middle East is a priority for him?"

The young woman's response encapsulated some what we were up against.

"I don't know," she replied. "I just feel it.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“A day after we returned from our trip, a day before Ramadan was set to begin, Philippe called. “Turn on CNN.” I flipped on the TV, and there on the Senate floor stood Senator John McCain, delivering a speech. He said, “Huma represents what is best about America: the daughter of immigrants, who has risen to the highest levels of our government on the basis of her substantial personal merit and her abiding commitment to the American ideals that she embodies so fully,” McCain continued and ended, saying, “I am proud to know Huma and to call her my friend.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“Our team walked through the women’s empowerment center, which was operating in a multistory building, one of the stops we were contemplating for the First Lady. The young man and woman escorting us took us to the roof as part of the tour. I looked out over the city, and other than the bright blue sea, most everything I saw was dusty, arid, and brown except, off in the distance, where I noticed a patch of vibrant green. There were nice buildings and what appeared to be trees and grass. It looked like a desert oasis, or a mirage.

“What’s that?” I asked.
“That,” our consul general said, “is an Israeli settlement.”
“But it’s so green. I thought you said there was very little running water here.”
“That’s right,” he said. “There’s limited running water here. The Israelis control the water so twenty times more goes there than comes here.”

It was the first time I saw up close what it was like to live under the daily humiliation Palestinians had suffered for years. There it was, a better, easier life, starting right at them.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“We had failed the person we should be calling President elect and we had failed our children.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“wherever”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“No matter how hard I tried, whether it was to help Anthony, to threaten him, to sympathize with him, to ignore him, to throw him out of my house, it was impossible to move on. This man was going to ruin me, and now he was going to jeopardize HRC's chances of winning the presidency, which would leave our country in the hands of someone dangerously unfit for the office.

On the plane after the event, Jen came over to update HRC. The letter Comey had sent to Congress was out. It confirmed what the reporters had heard. The Comey investigation was officially reopened. It turned out that the Southern District, which was prosecuting Anthony's case involving the teenager, had found emails of mine on his laptop and to this day I do not know where or how because I never knew they were there. They called the FBI's New York office, who then called the DC office, which meant the laptop had ended up with Comey. They didn't alert Anthony's attorneys or mine. I watched HRC's face as she processed it. The moment she made eye contact with me, I just broke down.

I had held it together for months—through the night of the shocking photo, all the meetings with Children's Services, the paparazzi on the street, becoming a single parent overnight, the daily hate messages, and even, until just a few minutes ago, the news about Comey's announcement to Congress. But now that I knew the investigation somehow involved my own email, tears flowed out of me. HRC stood up from her seat, came over to hug me, and then walked with me to the bathroom so I could compose myself. On a plane full of colleagues, Secret Service agents, reporters, photographers—everyone with eyes simultaneously averted and questioning—she did that.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“On the flight to New Hampshire, one of our consultants pulled me aside to pick up a conversation we had had many days before. Why did Hillary insist on campaigning in New Hampshire? In early strategy meetings, advisors had suggested skipping aggressive campaigning there, given Sanders's advantages as the senator from a neighboring state. HRC was firm; no matter what, she was campaigning and competing in New Hampshire. Now on the plane, talking to someone who had been on the Obama team in 2008, I simply said, "If you'd been with us in 2008, you would understand." In 2008, New Hampshire voters had picked HRC over Obama even when polls showed her down by double digits. These people were there for her when no one else thought she had a shot, and she was going to show them the respect they deserved whether she had a chance of winning or not.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“Her expression remained unchanged as I spoke. She looked at me directly and I continued rambling for a bit. She let me finish. Suddenly, she changed the script I thought we were both meant to follow. Her response was crisp and clear. She did nothing Cheryl had prepared me for. She didn’t say I told you so, she didn’t tell me I was fired or that she would help me find a new job. In fact, she gave no hint that anything about my role was to be altered. What she wanted to tell me was that though people were pressuring her to let me go, she did not believe it was the right thing to do and had no plan whatsoever to listen to my critics. Then she proceeded to list all the reasons why. That I was valued in our organization. That she had confidence in my work. That she believed I was a good manager, an effective problem solver. That she knew the number of people who supported me far exceeded the number who wanted me out. That she did not intend to be bullied into doing something just because that’s what other people wanted. That she knew that I had a son to think of, and she wanted to be sure I was able to support him. She didn’t say this, but we both knew that if she fired me I might be completely ostracized from Democratic politics and largely unemployable, something I couldn’t even fathom. And last, she said that she did not believe I should pay a professional price for what was ultimately my husband’s mistake, not mine. I think I started breathing again only when she finished talking.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“anyway. A year later, Barack Obama, then the Democratic party nominee, would be branded a foreigner, a Muslim, and an Arab—with all the fever-pitch insinuations those associations conjured. Perhaps I should have seen it as a canary in the coal mine, but the then Republican nominee, John McCain, repudiated the attacks,”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“I cannot count the number of backstages and stage wings from which I had watched HRC speak, illuminated by klieg lights. History and Hillary Clinton were old bedfellows by now. But for me, as a young woman, there was no moment sweeter than standing on the sidelines of that stage at the Centennial Hotel when she received that victory—cautiously, carefully as perhaps only a woman would. To this day it is still one of the most inspiring moments I was privileged to witness with her. Anything felt possible in that moment—after all, just the day before we had been told our campaign was at death's door. I was not even dissuaded by news coverage that failed to acknowledge that she had made history, instead reporting she had "narrowly" won, just barely "edging out" Obama.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“When the program closed and she was done taking photos and shaking hands, my mother guided her into the reception room, asking if she had a few minutes to talk.

"No, Mom. There is no time." I was caught off guard, and so I instinctively tried to stop them from walking into the room together. HRC had television interviews lined up, but they weren't my main concern.

"I have plenty of time, I want to talk to your mother," HRC said as Mom linked her arm with hers and led her to the windows. They sat facing each other on a sofa, their knees almost touching. I hadn't intended to leave, but when I saw my mother hesitate, and HRC take her hand in her own to put her at ease, I backed out of the room. Just as I'd feared, this was going to be a serious conversation.

I left the door ajar and stood in the archway to eavesdrop. After they each praised the other for a successful program, Mom said, "Hillary, I am jealous of you. My daughter has spent more of her life with you than she has with me.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“When I first stepped foot on foreign soil on behalf of my country in 1997, America was arguably the sole superpower of the world. Since then, our country and the world had been rocked first by terrorism on a sustained international scale, then a war that opened with shock and awe but quickly descended into loss and devastation, and then a global economic crisis. Reframing the story of American power in the world was central to the new mission: We were no longer focused on sending boots on the ground. No, this time we were sending Hillary Clinton in kitten heels.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“If it hadn't been for Cheryl, it wouldn't have occurred to me, but after that conversation, I did notice how heavily male our meetings often were.

Once, during a meeting in Asia, the host foreign minister opened his remarks by saying, "Madam Secretary, I want you to take not that we have more women on our delegation than men. It is inspired by your leadership. We thought you might appreciate that." HRC smiled widely and said, "Yes, yes I do, indeed, Minister. That's wonderful." She then quickly jumped into her points, because on our side of the table sat mostly white men, with the exception of two women: HRC and me.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir

“Well past midnight, HRC cast her vote in favor of the amendment, though she was clear about her reservations. When she delivered floor remarks, she said, "Even though the resolution before the Senate is not as strong as I would like in requiring the diplomatic route first... I take the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a United Nations resolution and seek to avoid war, if possible.... A vote for the resolution is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President. And we say to him: Use these powers wisely and as a last resort.”
― Huma Abedin, Both/And: A Memoir