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.

[On the desert:] The wind was a constant, and when you paid attention, it seemed like the earth's own breathing.

The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn't have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.

I don't believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it.

Oh my God, I don't think you can say anyone looks forward to controversy.

I have never had to face anything that could overwhelm the native optimism and stubborn perseverance I was blessed with.

So they can create a class they don't like-here, homosexuals-or a class that they consider is suspect in the marriage category, and they can create that class and decide benefits on that basis when they themselves have no interest in the actual institution of marriage as married?