Well my memory for names is absolutely appalling, but I know I did pass through a phase of books like King Solomon’s Mines. H. Rider Haggard was the author, and he wrote these great romantic adventure stories. I used to enjoy Georgette Heyer, in which the hero was usually a rather middle-aged gentleman, a very good sword fighter, with a beautiful young lady and all the rest of it. Great sword fighting and all highly romantic, adventurous activity. I used to find these things quite entertaining. I even passed through a phase when I quite enjoyed Western stories. Nowadays, I find them a little on the naive side but, for a period, I found the Western stories quite entertaining light reading. They are very romanticized, as we all know. Later on, I became much more interested in reading biographies, particularly about people who had made their mark in the community. I still enjoy reading books of that nature.

C. S. Lewis - his works were very, very important during my time there. We had discussion groups. I did become more attracted to it although I still attended the Methodist church. If you read Lewis. Then until this day, he did the lectures, something like christian behaviour and 'the screwtape letters', and we were all discussing them. I thought some of his work was the most illuminating to people reaching out to christianity because you're always questioning particularly at that age and you're looking for reassurance and for answers. Indeed you go on questioning throughout your life.

At Sunday school I was given this little book of lyric poems. It wasn’t even a book; more like a booklet. I remember reading the poems inside and not even knowing what this feeling was that I had; it was almost like ecstasy. I felt so pierced by those words.

I remember the awakening that occurred in me when I read, for the first time, Franz Kafka. ... That morning I was happy. I wanted to run out and embrace them, all these garbage collectors, because they taught me that there was another world than the world of Kafka, which is absurd and desperate, and despairing.

And I didn’t know at that moment what my impact was. I actually fell asleep that night crying. But the next morning, my mother woke us up, and she said she doesn’t remember this dress, but it was a black with white polka dot dress. And her hair was finally properly combed.  She had for the first time in a year some makeup on, and I knew my mom was back. And that may have been one of the happiest moments of my life.

Find the friends who do that. Find the friends who never tell you that you can’t do it, but who point you in the right direction, hold you when you fail, and push you when you need the push. Those are hard friends to value sometimes, but they are the best of friends.

I didn’t start out thinking I would be a children’s book author. I didn’t start out thinking I’d be an author at all. If you know my biography, you’ve heard that I spoke Spanish before I spoke English and struggled until my young adulthood with learning how to speak and write English properly. It was Philomel Books and [publisher] Jill Santopolo who came to me and proposed writing a children’s picture book about my life.

And in many, many parts of the world, if you’re going to deprive a parent of custody of their child, you better give them a lawyer. And we don’t. We have an unequal representation of people in our court system. And that does, I think, provide an injustice that we don’t pay enough attention to.

Well, what's very interesting is that those people read our opinions which can be, at moments, rather animated. An animated exchange in writing among the justices. And many people who read our opinions think we have to be at each other's necks constantly. It's interesting we're not. When we're talking about cases at our conference it's generally a conversation. It's really a talk about what our perspectives are and why we have reached the conclusions we've reached.

I tell the kids that I speak with on these book tours that my greatest legacy will be the last child who remembers something I’ve said or done that helped them manage something in their life. Once I die, I will be alive through that last child whose life I helped make easier in some way. And that, I hope, could be a very long time.