Christine Quinn
Consensus doesn't happen by magic... You have to drive to it.
To get things done, you have to get people together.
I come as one package deal. An Irish lesbian who wakes up every day and goes to work. And I don't spend a lot of time thinking about being 'the first this' or 'the first that' because it would take up space in my brain.
It would be thrilling, obviously, to be able to have a woman and an openly LGBT person as the mayor of New York City.
Bike lanes - I put that now in the category of things you shouldn't discuss at dinner parties, right? It used to be money and politics and religion. Now, in New York, you should add bike lanes.
Bike lanes are clearly controversial. And one of the problems with bike lanes - and I'm generally a supporter of bike lanes - but one of the problems with bike lanes has been not the concept of them, which I support, but the way the Department of Transportation has implemented them without consultation with communities and community boards.
I just want people to know you can get through stuff. I hope people can see that in what my life has been and where it is going.
I want to be affirmatively proud of what I have made my way through. And to do that, in the same way I had to tell my father and my family and my friends that I was gay, I need to not hide this anymore.
My late mother was very clear to my sister and I that we were to be strong women; that we were to be effective; that we were to be heard.
The library of my elementary school had this great biography section, and I read all of these paperback biographies until they were dog-eared. The story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Curie and Martin Luther King and George Washington Carver and on and on and on.
All I wanted was to be involved in politics and government.
I try to not think too much about how stuff gets seen as it's being done by a woman. Because if you think about it, then you end up thinking about how you're acting, and if you are thinking about how you're acting, then you are preoccupied and you're going to end up being insincere. You're kind of not present.
The best thing to know is what you don't know.Collection: Best Things
I'm not about talking and finger-pointing and complaining; I'm about getting things done.Collection: Talking
Cliven Bundy is breaking the law. He's breaking the law and he wants all of us to pay for his cattle while he's ranting about people who are part of social welfare programs.Collection: Law