Breaking In Quotes

“[Sonia Sotomayor's] opinion echoed with her personal story: 'Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: 'I do not belong here.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“Even before the publication of her bestseller, [Sonia] Sotomayor was a different breed: approachable, human, like the people who came out to greet her. Her book brought her to another level of celebrity and public adulation. She wrote about her 'darker experiences' growing up. She wrote that she had a pudgy nose, a mop of hair, and that it would take most of her adult life to feel pulled together. She became an everywoman with everywoman doubts.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“Before Sonia Sotomayor's appointment, a total of 110 justices had been named to the United States Supreme Court since its 1789 creation. All but 4 of these justices were white men, reflecting the traditional power base of the nation. Beginning with African American Thurgood Marshall in 1967, the groundbreakers navigated the public expectations and internal rituals of a tradition bound institution.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“In the end, [Sonia] Sotomayor had been in the right place at the right time for the right president. She had the tickets and the people: Princeton, Yale, Morgenthau, Calabresi. Fortified by the dreams of her mother, her personal smarts, and intense determination, Sotomayor had defied predictions from her youth.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“Conservative critics of Obama seized on his aspiration for 'empathy,' declaring it an invitation to judicial activism - as if empathy could not coexist with impartiality - and later made it a subtext of their confirmation complaints.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“Yet such authenticity was part of [Sonia Sotomayor's] attraction. And she acknowledged what few other prominent figures revealed: she sometimes felt awkward and out of place. In her speeches, she talked about fighting the fear of missteps and failure. 'Like yourself. Like who you are,' she advised young people trying to make their way in the world.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“[Sonia Sotomayor] maintained tight bonds with her Hispanic community. On the May 25, 2009, evening that President Obama had called to offer her the nomination, he had asked her to promise him two things: 'The first,' she recalled, 'was to remain the person I was and the second was to stay connected to my community. I said to him that those were two easy promises to make, because those two things I could not change.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“[Ruth Bader] Ginsburg, the former women's rights advocate, made sure the nation knew she was there, even if alone. When President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress for the first time in February 2009, Ginsburg was recovering from pancreatic cancer and chemotherapy treatments, but she dragged herself to the evening event and sat with her brethren. She said she wanted to make sure that people watching the nationally televised address saw that the Supreme Court had at least one woman.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“[John H.] Sununu promised Republicans that the relatively obscure [David H.] Souter would be a 'home run for conservatives,' but this prediction could not have been more wrong. Souter ended up being one of the liberal members of the Court during the late 1990s and the 2000s, which prompted a 'no more Souters' mantra among conservatives.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“During Scalia's confirmation hearing, so many senators brought up Italian connections that Senator Howell Heflin, a Democrat from Alabama, told the nominee, 'I believe that almost every Senator that has an Italian American connection has come forward to welcome you...I would be remiss if I did not mention the fact that my great-great-grandfather married a widow who was married first to an Italian American." Getting Heflin's joke, Scalia shot back, 'Senator, I have been to Alabama several times, too.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“For extra measure, [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan put another 'hold' on two other GOP favorites for federal courts of appeals, prompting White House counsel [Boyden] Gray made sure that [George H.] Bush knew that Moynihan had been blocking action on the appeals court nominations 'to extract a district court judge from us,' and he advised the president to sign the Sotomayor nomination but hold off making it official until the administration had gotten word that the two appeals court nominees were confirmed.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“All the Democrats who voted for him [Clarence Thomas] were from the South, the opposite of what had happened in 1967, when Southern Democratic senators opposed [Thurgood] Marshall. By 1991, blacks had become a core constituency of Southern senators, and Democrats feared alienating them with a vote against Thomas.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“She did not retreat in humiliation. She did not turn bitter. She developed her own mantra: 'How am I not going to let this beat me?' In later years she would tell students, 'You have to get up and try again. That's sometimes really hard to do, when you get embarrassed over failure.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“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?”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“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.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“At 8:10 p.m., her cell phone rang. It was the White House operator. [Sonia] Sotomayor held her cell phone in her right hand. She put her left hand over her chest to calm her beating heart. 'And the president got on the phone and said to me, 'Judge, I would like to announce you as my selection to be the next associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.' And I said to him - I caught my breath and started to cry and said, 'Thank you, Mr. President.'' The moment produced a blur of emotions, and she said it took many days, weeks even, to get a sense of herself back.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“[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.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“[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?”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“As [Sonia] Sotomayor wrote in her autobiography, once she set herself on the path of a legal career, 'I saw no reason to stint on ambition.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“No one would have disputed [Ruth Bader Ginsburg's] intellect and seriousness, but the woman who wore her hair pulled back tightly in a short ponytail had a soft voice and had trouble looking people in the eye. She was also known for being so serious that as a youngster her daughter, Jane, made a booklet called 'Mommy Laughs' that recounted the rare episodes when her mother revealed her sense of humor.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

“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.”
― Joan Biskupic, Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice