I was a super once - an extra - in 'Die Fledermaus,' and was seated within three feet of Placido Domingo. I had never heard a voice of that beauty so close up. It felt as if an electric shock were running through me.

America is known as a country that welcomes people to its shores. All kinds of people. The image of the Statue of Liberty with Emma Lazarus' famous poem. She lifts her lamp and welcomes people to the golden shore, where they will not experience prejudice because of the color of their skin, the religious faith that they follow.

All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself.

Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.

It's a facet of the gay rights movement that people don't think about enough. Why suddenly marriage equality? Because it wasn't until 1981 that the court struck down Louisiana's 'head and master rule,' that the husband was head and master of the house.

The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.

The concern was that if a woman was doing gender equality, her chances of making it to tenure in the law school were diminished. It was considered frivolous.

I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman's equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling.

If you just needed the skills to pass the bar, two years would be enough. But if you think of law as a learned profession, then a third year is an opportunity for, on the one hand, public service and practice experience, but on the other, also to take courses that round out the law that you didn't have time to do.

The experience I don't want to see repeated occurred in 'Bush v. Gore.' The Court divided five to four. There were four separate dissents, and that confused the press. In fact, some of the reporters announced that the decision was seven-two. There was no time to get together.

I'm sure I've changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up - as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I've changed my mind about some food that I didn't like when I was young.

I was the first tenured woman at Columbia. That was 1972; every law school was looking for its woman. Why? Because Stan Pottinger, who was then head of the office for civil rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was enforcing the Nixon government contract program.

I think we understand that for the Court to work well, we have to not only respect but genuinely like each other.

I certainly respect the belief of the Hobby Lobby owners. On the other hand, they have no constitutional right to foist that belief on the hundreds and hundreds of women who work for them who don't share that belief.

In the '50s, too many women, even though they were very smart, they tried to make the man feel that he was brainier. It was a sad thing.

Most states in the union where the death penalty is theoretically on the books don't have executions.

Dissents speak to a future age.

If I had any talent that God could give me, I would be a great diva.

'Whole Women's Health' made it very clear that poor women were no longer going to be left out.

Whatever final judgment awaits 'Bush v. Gore' in the annals of history, I am certain that the good work and good faith of the U.S. federal judiciary as a whole will continue to sustain public confidence at a level never beyond repair.

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.

My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.

She never envisioned a legal career for me, but she did think it was very important that I be able to support myself, and I think she would be pleased to see what has become of me.

I think Mozart's operas 'The Marriage of Figaro' and 'Don Giovanni' are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.

In the course of a marriage, one accommodates the other.

If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be 'Citizens United.' I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

A gender line... helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the '40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.

I was tremendously fortunate to be alive and a lawyer, working at a university so I had more flexible hours, when the women's movement was coming alive and when it became possible to argue successfully for a view of the equal protection clause that included women.

In truth, I did enjoy the benefits of a Harvard connection.

I'm a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.

The worst times were the years I was alone. The image to the public entering the courtroom was eight men, of a certain size, and then this little woman sitting to the side. That was not a good image for the public to see.

Justice Scalia and I served together on the D.C. Circuit. So his votes are not surprising to me. What I like about him is that he's very funny and very smart.

It is not like I have gone crazy, I just don't want to take any chances. You never know what could happen.

At Columbia Law School, my professor of constitutional law and federal courts, Gerald Gunther, was determined to place me in a federal court clerkship, despite what was then viewed as a grave impediment: On graduation, I was the mother of a 4-year-old child.

People who have been hardworking, tax paying, those people ought to be given an opportunity to be on a track that leads towards citizenship, and if that happened, then they wouldn't be prey to the employers who say, 'We want you because we know that you work for a salary we could not lawfully pay anyone else.'

So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

I do hope that some of my dissents will one day be the law.

Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community.