When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the '40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.

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 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.

I understand people who say, 'There is no Queen without Freddie. Just leave it be.' Because that's what we felt, following his death. All three of us said, 'Right, that's the end of the band.' But the band just didn't seem to die.

The streets made me. They stay at me. There's nothing that's gonna take away from my legacy. I'm sorry. It is what it is. I'm dying this way. With the crown on my head, nobody can take nothing away from me. It is what it is. I am who I am. Bottom line.

I don't think you can look at my history and say they love me to death in Silicon Valley.

The death tax is unfair, inefficient, economically unsound and, frankly, immoral.