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.

When you come from a background like mine, where you're entering worlds that are so different than your own, you have to be afraid.

I got a message from one of my friends in Puerto Rico, who said, 'Sonia, there's nobody working in Puerto Rico - they're all glued to the television'. And I got a similar message from a friend in Spain.

I got a label because I was Hispanic and a woman and [therefore] I had to be liberal.

You know, failure hurts. Any kind of failure stings. If you live in the sting, you will - undoubtedly - fail. My way of getting past the sting is to say no, I'm just not going to let this get me down.

You always wonder whether the attacks on my capabilities came from an honest evaluation of my accomplishments or from stereotypical presumptions that we, people of color, just can't do it, for some reason. This is, for an accomplished Latino, an accomplished African American, an accomplished anyone who disproves stereotypes, it's a constant battle in your life.

It really takes growing up to treasure the specialness of being different.