there’s something very special about you. You’ve been blessed. I’m glad we met. - Sonia Sotomayor

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.

But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire. That will, wherever it finally leads, does at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize that the proper measure of success is not how much you’ve closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you’ve done today.

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.