“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.”

I’m used to people kind of knowing me in the community.

It’s really scary or it’s easy to generate fear around an idea or around an -ism when you don’t provide any substance to it.

Democrats are a big-tent party. You know, I’m not trying to impose an ideology on all, you know, several hundred members of Congress.

Working-class Americans want a clear champion, and there is nothing radical about moral clarity in 2018.

Congress is too old. They don’t have a stake in the game.

We have a political culture of intimidation, of favoring, of patronage, and of fear, and that is no way for a community to be governed.

The way the Queens Democratic party machine has worked, they operate on a politics of exclusion.

I want to speak to people directly as much as possible.

I just hope that more people will ignore the fatalism of the argument that we are beyond repair. We are not beyond repair. We are never beyond repair.

I understand the pain of working-class Americans because I have experienced the pain.

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.

The biggest pieces of work that we do are vaccines, because those save lives, and also family planning. Because if a woman can space the births of her children, it changes everything for her health and her child’s health.

My mother says I didn’t open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked.

Doth not a man die even in his birth? The breaking of prison is death, and what is our birth, but a breaking of prison?

Your work is not your job. Your job is what they pay you to do; your work is what you were born to do.

I was born wise. Street-wise, people-wise, self-wise. This wisdom was my birthright.

I wish I had never been born–there or anywhere else.

Purpose is when you know and understand what you were born to accomplish. Vision is when you see it in your mind and begin to imagine it

I was born with scoliosis. I have a double curvature of the spine, and it’s forced me to use a wheelchair because the disease has really taken hold. It really saddens me that I can’t ride.