Quotes from Joan Biskupic

Sonia] Sotomayor resisted comparisons with other justices, saying she considered them counterproductive. Speaking generally, she said that throughout her life she knew there would always be someone who would seem smarter, faster, and better. She said the comparisons she preferred were personal to her: 'Am I learning? Am I getting better?

Sonia Sotomayor] believed that the fact that she was a woman, a single woman, played a role in the queries. 'There were private questions I was offended by. I was convinced they were not asking those questions of the male applicants...I wondered if they ever asked those questions of the male candidates. But the society has a double standard.

A worldly wise and somewhat overbearing Lucy asks the good-hearted and somewhat naive Charlie Brown, 'Charlie, what would you rather do, be captain of the baseball team or marry the cute redheaded girl?' And Charlie replies innocently, 'Why can't I do both?' to which Lucy responds, 'It's the real world, Charlie Brown.' "60

None of the politicking of this first judicial nomination was lost on the street-smart Sotomayor. Less than two years after she was sworn in as a district court judge, she told a conference focused on women in the judiciary, 'It is a political appointment. [People] have to make themselves known. You simply do not put in an application.

For weeks, [Sonia] Sotomayor had seen drafts of Ginsburg's opinion as it circulated among the justices. She knew she was about to be a public target. But she would have the courage of her convictions - perhaps stubbornly, misguidedly - yet with confidence enough to be the one in an 8-1 vote.

A week before the Daimler opinion was handed down, in January 2014, [Sonia] Sotomayor told an audience of more than a thousand that to bolster her courage, she often thought about the worst thing that could happen when she undertook a challenging endeavor. She would conclude: 'You know something...so what?