Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

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.

Seeing the task in the context of another

If you are palpably present in the moment, continuously mindful of and responsive to your listeners, they will follow where you lead.

Look, I just needed to make sure that you were sure.” “Why didn’t you just ask?” “Sometimes I figure I have to play devil’s advocate.” I could have done without the drama. The office declined to prosecute the case.

The quality of mercy: “It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

Without acknowledgment and communication, forgiveness was beyond reach.

Each death of someone close to me has come as a slap, reminding me again of my own mortality, compelling me to ask: What am I accomplishing? Is my life meaningful? When Abuelita died, I felt spurred to study even harder in

Many of my classmates have happier memories of Blessed Sacrament, and in time I would find my own satisfaction in the classroom. My first years there, however, I met with little warmth. In part, it was that the nuns were critical of working mothers, and their disapproval was felt by latchkey kids. The irony of course was that my mother wouldn't have been working such long hours if not to pay for that education she believed was the key to any aspirations for a better life.

Granting myself permission to use my innate skills of the heart, accepting that emotion was perfectly valid in the art of persuasion, amounted to nothing less than a breakthrough.

People who live in difficult circumstances need to know that happy endings are possible.

But more important was her example that a surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence.

he was teaching the common-law rule against perpetuities, which limits how far into the future a will can control a line of inheritance.

When I look back on my childhood, most of my memories are mapped on either side of certain fault lines that split my world. Opposites coexisted without ever being reconciled:

Half a debate is listening to what the other person says,” Ken advised. It was easy to present your own points, much harder to listen well enough to respond effectively to your opponent.

Quiet pragmatism, of course, lacks the romance of vocal militancy. But I felt myself more a mediator than a crusader. My strengths were reasoning, crafting compromises, finding the good and the good faith on both sides of an argument, and using that to build a bridge. Always, my first question was, what’s the goal? And then, who must be persuaded if it is to be accomplished? A respectful dialogue with one’s opponent almost invariably goes further than a harangue outside his or her window. If you want to change someone’s mind, you must understand what need shapes his or her opinion. To prevail, you must first listen — that eternal lesson of Forensics Club!