Although wisdom is built on life experiences, the mere accumulation of years guarantees nothing.

I stand on the shoulders of countless people, yet there is one extraordinary person who is my life aspiration. That person is my mother, Celina Sotomayor.

It's not the heart that compels conclusions in cases, it's the law.

In examining witnesses, I learned to ask general questions so as to elicit details with powerful sensory associations: the colors, the sounds, the smells that lodge an image in the mind and put the listener in the burning house.

If you're poor, you don't often live near a good school. If it's a competitive public school program, our kids are not prepared to enter those programs.

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. When a witness hesitated, my mind would race to the conclusion that he was trying to hide something. What was it? I'd dissect the story in my brain and nine times out of ten figure out a hole they were trying to avoid.

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