[A]lthough wisdom is built on life experience, the mere accumulation of years guarantees nothing.

I think that even someone who got into an institution through affirmative action could prove they were qualified by what they accomplished there. Page 188

I have come to believe that in order to thrive, a child must have at least one adult in her life who shows her unconditional love, respect, and confidence.

The challenges I have faced—among them material poverty, chronic illness, and being raised by a single mother—are not uncommon, but neither have they kept me from uncommon achievements.

Sonia lives her life fully. If she dies tomorrow, she’ll die happy. If she lives the way you want her to live, she’ll die miserable. So leave her alone, okay?

I’ve always believed phone calls from kids must be allowed if mothers are to feel welcome in the workplace, as anyone who has worked in my chambers can attest.

Learning how to balance the needs of individuals with the no-less-real needs of an institution was an important lesson. It’s fine to be on the side of the little guy, but he too will ultimately...

The Latino community anchored me, but I didn’t want it to isolate me from the full extent of what Princeton had to offer, including engagement with the larger community. Page 148

Dressing badly has been a refuge much of my life, a way of compelling others to engage with my mind, not my physical presence. Page. 283

[T]he habit of living as if in the shadow of death has remained with me, and I consider that, too, a gift.

…you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. The real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire.

Many of the gaps in my knowledge and understanding were simply limits of class and cultural background, not lack of aptitude or application as I feared. Page 135

If you held to principle so passionately, so inflexibly, indifferent in the particulars of circumstance – the full range of what human beings, with all their flaws and foibles, might endure or create – if...

I would warn any minority student today against the temptations of self-segregation: take support and comfort from your own group as you can, but don’t hide within it.

That tide of insecurity would come in and out over the years, sometimes stranding me for a while but occasionally lifting me just beyond what I thought I could accomplish. Either way, it would wash...

As difficult an environment as the DA’s Office could be, I saw no overarching conspiracy against women. The unequal treatment was usually more a matter of old habits dying hard.

Seeing my mother get back to her studies was all the proof I needed that a chain of emotion can persuade when one forged of logic won’t hold. But more important was her example that...

There is indeed something deeply wrong with a person who lacks principles, who has no moral core. There are, likewise, certainly values that brook no compromise, and I would count among them integrity, fairness, and...

… a surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence. Page 115

In my experience when a friend unloaded about a boyfriend or spouse, the listener soaked up the complaint and remembered it long after the speaker had forgiven the offense.

I could see that troubling the waters was occasionally necessary to bring attention to the urgency of some problem. But this style of political expression sometimes becomes an end in itself and can lose potency...

As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls.

There were no actual villains, just inertia. The administration genuinely wanted more diversity for reasons of its image as well as fairness, notwithstanding the cranky alumni letters in The Daily Princetonian. … Hiring committees had...

[T]he more critical lesson I learned that day is still one too many kids never figure out: don’t be shy about making a teacher of any willing party who knows what he or she is...

I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can’t imagine someone else’s point of view.

The dynamism of any diverse community depends not only on the diversity itself but on promoting a sense of belonging among those who formerly would have been considered and felt themselves outsiders.

The differences were plain enough, and yet I saw that they were as nothing compared with what we had in common. As I lay in bed at night, the sky outside my window reflecting the...

I accepted what the Sisters taught in religion class: that God is loving, merciful, charitable, forgiving. That message didn’t jibe with adults smacking kids.

I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. That was its purpose: to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds...

The tatters of old stories are tangled, weathered, muted by long-held silences that succeeded loud feuds, and sometimes no doubt re-dyed a more flattering color.

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...

It seems obvious now: the child who spends school days in a fog of semi-comprehension has no way to know her problem is not that she is slow-witted.

There are no bystanders in life […] Our humanity makes us each a part of something greater than ourselves.