. . . But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is instirring within us the will to aspire. That will, wherever it finally leads, does at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize That the proper measure of success is not how much you've closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you've done today.

As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society.

In my experience when a friend unloaded about a boyfriend or spouse, the listener soaked up the complaint and remembered it long after the speaker had forgiven the offense.

There's a great variety of people in Washington, but I think because of the great concentration of people in New York, that variety is more visible. You walk the streets and there are people of every color, shape and size, ethnic background, religion, it doesn't matter. It's always present.

Same way I have my entire life. Keep my family and friends close. My Latino friends close. I visit the island [Puerto Rico] as often as I humanly can.

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

as for the possibility of 'having it all,' career and family with no sacrifice to either, that is a myth we would do well to abandon, together with the pernicious notion that a woman who chooses one of the other is somehow deficient.