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

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.

It’s always better to speak the language of the team. Not only for the direct contact with everyone.

Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

Russia has cultivated an opaque network of patronage across the region that it uses to influence and direct decision- making.

Once you discover that you can, then you must. And it’s not easy. You have to take direct steps.

The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.

We look directly into our suffering rather than try to become happy. The happiness that arises from this approach is reliable.

It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.