“I was born in a place where your ZIP code determines your destiny.”

My mother cleaned homes and drove school buses, and when my family was on the brink of foreclosure… I started bartending and waitressing.

It’s not just that I’m a woman of color running for office. It’s the way that I ran. It’s the way that my identity formed my methods.

I believe that every American should have stable, dignified housing; health care; education – that the most very basic needs to sustain modern life should be guaranteed in a moral society.

Mentors of mine were under a big pressure to minimize their femininity to make it. I’m not going to do that. That takes away my power. I’m not going to compromise who I am.

We know enough to reject the stereotype that people in the Midwest do not care about their brothers and sisters.

We are fighting for an unapologetic movement for economic, social, and racial justice in the United States.

I don’t think any person in America should die because they are too poor to live.

It is unacceptable to be disrespectful of Congressman Crowley. He’s done some phenomenal, phenomenal work for the Bronx and Queens.

We have to stick to the message: What are we proposing to the American people? Not, ‘What are we fighting against?’

Our democracy is designed to speak truth to power.

There is no such thing as talking about class without there being implications of the racial history of the United States. You just can’t do it.

I don’t like having people do little things for me.

We have to have a diversity of age represented in Congress, too.

I was born to a dad who was born in the South Bronx while the Bronx was burning, while landlords were committing arson to their own buildings.

It’s disingenuous to pretend the sources of our money don’t impact the policy we write – you just can’t serve two masters.

The Republicans galvanize their base by inciting a lot of fear; they operate on a lot of mythmaking. So we have to have something compelling. We shouldn’t be afraid to be bold.

You would have a huge statelessness problem if you don’t consider a child born abroad a U.S. citizen.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.

Now I think all of us were born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it. You, you fill me up.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are all born selfish.

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

Music is the universal language no matter the country we are born in or the color of our skin. Bring us all together.

But from each crime are born bullets that will one day seek out in you where the heart lies.

Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth.