“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.”

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.

I felt like the only way to effectively run for office is if you had access to a lot of wealth, high social influence, a lot of dynastic power, and I knew that I didn’t have any of those things.

Campaigns are so much more expensive than people think they are. Just to keep the lights on is several thousand dollars a month.

Not all Democrats are the same.

She found the colors to paint him where the world had left him grey.

I deleted my words that had your darkness, instead my words with colors of power.

I personally think my sister is so stunning without makeup. And she doesn’t wear that much makeup because she has the best skin color.

We judge on the basis of what somebody looks like, skin color, whether we think they’re beautiful or not. That space on the Internet allows you to converse with somebody with none of those things involved.

Lipstick is iconic. It’s the one product that marks out an era, and a certain lip colour can define a season. It makes me feel more ‘done’.

I shed skin after skin, seeking my true colors, expecting a rainbow or a stripe of black, but all I get are maps of red. We are all human underneath.

Obviously black matches with everything.

How your words and pauses have become mine. How you are a full stop to my every line. You have colored me with your thoughts, red and white. The tinge of my blood and the pure divine.