... a surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence. Page 115 - Sonia Sotomayor

I have followed my mother’s approach to family, refusing to limit myself to accidents of birth, blood, and marriage

Be diplomatic but direct, I told myself. I don’t tend to bang people over the head, but some situations require a bit of boldness

Few aspects of my work in the DA’s Office were more rewarding than to see what I had learned in childhood among the Latinos of the Bronx prove to be as relevant to my success as Ivy League schooling was. It was in effect to see that mastery of the law’s cold abstractions, which had taken such effort, was actually incomplete without an understanding of how they affected individual lives.