So many people grew up with challenges, as I did. There weren't always happy things happening to me or around me. But when you look at the core of goodness within yourself - at the optimism and hope - you realize it comes from the environment you grew up in.

I'm a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.

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.

The idea of a commonwealth relationship is alien to most people but I think that's true generally.

There are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action - to try to balance out those effects.

In the wider context, what I believe I was - the point I was making was that our life experiences do permit us to see some facts and understand them more easily than others.

When I first became a judge on the district court, I had one lawyer who came to argue before me, and he was looking off to the side as he was talking. I started asking him questions, and all of a sudden he whipped around and looked at me intently. I could see in his eyes that he had finally figured out, "This is no dummy, I'd better pay attention." It is satisfying to see that.