Joaquim Barbosa

In politics, my role model would be a very weird one - our second emperor, Pedro the Second. He was a person with no vanity. He cared a lot about the public interest. He cared a lot about Brazil evolving as an important country. And he didn't ask much for himself. He was ousted from power, and he lived with the help of friends in Paris.

I think my legacy will be in what most people don't like about me: my style - the separation between judge and lawyers, judge and politics, the real independence of the judiciary from the executive, from the legislative, from money. I'm criticized in Brazil because of that. In the end, I hope to prevail.

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.