“To me, lawyering is the height of service – and being involved in this profession is a gift.”

I savor life. When you have anything that threatens life it prods you into stepping back and really appreciating the value of life and taking from it what you can.

A surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence.

Through reading, I escaped the bad parts of my life in the South Bronx. And, through books, I got to travel the world and the universe. It, to me, was a passport out of my childhood and it remains a way – through the power of words – to change the world.

An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke – although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness.

Every lawyer, no matter whom they represent, is trying to help someone, whether it’s a person, a corporation, a government entity, or a small or big business. To me, lawyering is the height of service – and being involved in this profession is a gift.

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.

Although I grew up in very modest and challenging circumstances, I consider my life to be immeasurably rich.

My judicial philosophy is fidelity to the law.

My diabetes is such a central part of my life… it did teach me discipline, it also taught me about moderation. I’ve trained myself to be super-vigilant because I feel better when I am in control.

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

There are uses to adversity, and they don’t reveal themselves until tested. Whether it’s serious illness, financial hardship, or the simple constraint of parents who speak limited English, difficulty can tap unexpected strengths.

In every position that I’ve been in, there have been naysayers who don’t believe I’m qualified or who don’t believe I can do the work. And I feel a special responsibility to prove them wrong.

I’ve spent my whole life learning how to do things that were hard for me.

I realized that people had an unreal image of me, that somehow I was a god on Mount Olympus. I decided that if I were going to make use of my role as a Supreme Court Justice, it would be to inspire people to realize that, first, I was just like them and second, if I could do it, so could they.

We apply law to facts. We don’t apply feelings to facts.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences…our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.

Cooking is an act of love, a gift, a way of sharing with others the little secrets — ‘piccoli segreti’ — that are simmering on the burners.

A woman who is careful with her words is a gift to all who know her.

No gift can ever replace the value of being there in person.

Gifts are meant to be wrapped. Honestly, it’s basic etiquette.

When we wallow in guilt, remorse, and shame over real or imagined sins of the past, we are disdaining God’s gift of grace.

The acknowledgment of and gratitude for favors and gifts received is loved and esteemed in Heaven and on earth.

The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.

The motive, principle, and end of the religious life is to make an absolute gift of self to God in a self-forgetting love, to end one’s own life in order to make room for God’s life.