“I respect the state workers and I respect their unions, but we simply can’t afford to pay benefits and pensions that are out of line with economic reality.”

I know how bad Albany is. I know it better than most. I understand why people are angry. I’m angry. The question is going to be, how do you change Albany, what is the plan for change, and then how do you actually get it done?

If I’m breathing in 2016, I’ll be happy.

I believe we need to attract a new generation of the best and brightest to public service and I believe that government can be a source of inspiration, not degradation.

The essential job of government is to facilitate, not frustrate, job development.

A governor can be a very good friend to people. A governor can be a formidable force.

I’ve worked on the urban agenda all my life. All. My. Life.

There is energy and power in a crisis.

If there’s a silver bullet in the battle to recapture Albany, it is the re-engagement of our citizens. This capital has become a physical metaphor for the isolation and alienation of our people.

People go into politics because they want the affirmation, and they want the applause.

Fight as hard as you can, and then understand there’s going to have to be some amount of reasonable compromise.

I believe public education is the new civil rights battle and I support charter schools.

There is no dispute that Albany needs to be changed. There is no dispute that the current situation in Albany is untenable. Nobody knows that better than I do.

I think naturally my orientation is from my father.

It’s time for the people of the Empire State to strike back.

I am against the death penalty.

Showed good business judgment, knowing that these continued lawsuits would be the untimely death of the gun industry.

The firmer your grasp on reality, the more power you will have to alter it for your purposes.

Real love will make you blind, Like myself when I started to write poems about her.

Real estate is the best investment for small savings. More money is made from the rise in real estate values than from all other causes combined.

Reality has its own power – you can turn your back on it, but it will find you in the end, and your inability to cope with it will be your ruin.

Art has no other object than to set aside the symbols of practical utility, the generalities that are conventionally and socially accepted, everything in fact which masks reality from us, in order to set us face to face with reality itself.

Life is really very simple. What we give out, we get back.

However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary.

We lived in a real rough place but my mother kept me straight.