I have never, ever focused on the negative of things. I always look at the positive.

I listened very, very carefully to the world around me to pick up the signals of when trouble was coming. Not that I could stop it. But it made me observant. That was helpful when I became a lawyer, because I knew how to read people's signals.

The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law.

A role model in the flesh provides more than inspiration; his or her very existence is confirmation of possibilities one may have every reason to doubt, saying, "Yes, someone like me can do this."

I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the south Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn't able to succeed at those institutions.

Much of the uncertainty of law is not an unfortunate accident: it is of immense social value.

I think that even someone who got into an institution through affirmative action could prove they were qualified by what they accomplished there.