An operatic voice is like no other.

When I graduated from law school in 1959, there wasn't a single woman on any federal bench. It wouldn't be a realistic ambition for a woman to want to become a federal judge. It wasn't realistic until Jimmy Carter became our president.

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.

My law school class in the late 1950s numbered over 500. That class included less than 10 women.

I would not like to be the only woman on the court.

Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that changed their abortion laws before Roe are not going to change back. So we have a policy that only affects poor women, and it can never be otherwise.

Eight, as you know, is not a good number for a multi-member court.

Our goal in the '70s was to end the closed door era. There were so many things that were off limits to women: policing, firefighting, mining, piloting planes.

On the whole, we think of our consumers - other judges, lawyers, the public. The law that the Supreme Court establishes is the law that they must live by, so all things considered, it's better to have it clearer than confusing.

We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.

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

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.

The notion that it is improper to look beyond the borders of the United States in grappling with hard questions has a certain kinship to the view that the U.S. Constitution is a document essentially frozen in time as of the date of its ratification.

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.

If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don't say, 'You don't know how to use the English language,' or 'How could you make that argument?' It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.

I get very little sleep when the court is sitting.

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.

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

I always thought that there was nothing an antifeminist would want more than to have women only in women's organizations, in their own little corner empathizing with each other and not touching a man's world.

The court generally moves in small steps rather than in one giant step.

I've had two cancer bouts in my years on the Court, and the first one, Justice O'Connor told me, 'Now, you do the chemotherapy on Friday because you'll get over it during the weekend and you can be back in court on Monday.'

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.

I do a variety of weight-lifting, elliptical glider, stretching exercises, push-ups.

I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed.

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.'

There are some women I definitely would not want to succeed me... but a man like David Souter, that would be great.

I always ask my law clerks, in addition to reading all the briefs, including all the amici briefs, that if there's a good law review article, they should bring it to me.

When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, we hold, it is ordinarily incumbent on the state to set the record straight.

Anybody who has been discriminated against, who comes from a group that's been discriminated against, knows what it's like.

I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in 2012.

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

I thought 'Heller' was a very bad decision.

My mother graduated from high school at 15 and went to work to support the family because the eldest son went to college.

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

We had to go on and do the work of the court and we did.

I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the '80s and '90s.

It won't happen. It would be an impossible dream. But I'd love to see 'Citizens United' overruled.

I was a proponent of the ERA. The women of my generation and my daughter's generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

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.

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.

At my advanced age - I'm now an octogenarian - I'm constantly amazed by the number of people who want to take my picture.

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.

My resume showed membership on both the Harvard and Columbia Law Reviews, a credit impressive abroad where it was not generally known that Law Reviews were student-operated publications.

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.

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.

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 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.

My biographers... would like to have my time at the court almost complete before they finish the book. We decided... to flip the order.

It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong, and I would do it this way,' but the greatest dissents do become court opinions.

We will never see a day when women of means are not able to get a safe abortion in this country.