Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

Still today, I cannot cross the threshold of a teaching institution without physical symptoms, in my chest and my stomach, of discomfort or anxiety. And yet I have never left school.

I was never very happy at school.

I go to third grade, and I'm scared to death. I'm just 6 years old, and the kids are so much bigger than me.

I had trained myself not to go to the bathroom throughout my elementary and junior high school years because I was bullied. And you don't understand why you're being bullied, so you just suppress it.

I was a very anxious kid. I was bullied at primary school and responded by making myself as anonymous as possible at secondary school.

Being in school, whenever I laughed or smiled, I would turn to find someone staring at me with this terrible hatred and disgust. I had to control everything - control my voice, control my facial expressions, control my hair and my clothes, and where I walked and where I sat - at every moment. I think that drove me to terrible anxiety.

Who does not recall school at least in part as endless dreary hours of boredom punctuated by moments of high anxiety?

The fear of life is the favorite disease of the 20th century.

I never really got nightmares from movies. In fact, I recall my father saying when I was three years old that I would be scared, but I never was.

I associate my motion picture career more with being unhappy and scared, or being under the gun, than with anything pleasant.

I think when your imagination goes to work, and when you're first bullied, you feel like you're going to die. School becomes a war zone, and you can't function.

I had my bully, and it was excruciating. Not only the bully, but the intimidation I felt.

When my kids were very young, I have seen them crying, as they didn't want to go to school.

The best-case scenario is that the glass shatters in my face! How do you think that makes me feel?

I was tortured, and probably half of it was deserved, but I was bullied - so much so that there were days when I was like, 'I can't go to school today.' I was too scared.

I do remember that I was very relieved that I did not have to go into a bank with them. I had, as you recall, I had already been brought into a bank before and it was better to be sitting outside.

I hated school. Even to this day, when I see a school bus it's just depressing to me. The poor little kids.

My most memorable teacher was Rich Campe, my third-grade teacher at Fairlands Elementary in Pleasanton, California.

My first fear was about the devil, when I was around fire, something I saw in a movie. I think it's about pain, in whichever form it comes.

Panic is a horrible thing.

My first day in grade school, I was plain scared. I left the comfort of my run-down house, which I loved, and went to school where it was cold, it smelled, the lighting was bad.

I still have nightmares about taking tests.

I suddenly felt the plane go down. I thought we were going to die. I was really scared. I was sitting with my head in my hands.

I'm accustomed to being harassed.

One girl used to call me Brownie and tell me to go back to my own country. At lunch, I'd get a bag of chips from the vending machine and eat it in the storage room so I wouldn't have to see her.