My Own Words

by Ruth Bader Ginsburg

At Cornell University, professor of European literature Vladimir Nabokov changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him.

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.

we divided 5–3 or 4–3 (Justice Scalia’s death reduced the number of Justices to eight) only eight times.

“Prejudice saves us a painful trouble, the trouble of thinking.”

The operetta’s hero, Frederic, when he was a little lad, was, on his father’s instruction, to be apprenticed to a pilot. Frederic’s nursemaid, Ruth, was a little hard of hearing, so she apprenticed Frederic to a pirate, instead of to a pilot.

Pirates Of Penzance