Quotes from Christine Quinn

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.

I know New Yorkers are gonna vote for a candidate - me - who has the longest record of delivering for them. They want a mayor who can deliver for them. And I'm the only one - I don't care who gets in - who has that record.

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.

One of the things that drives me crazy as a professional woman is you'll have bought a suit, and you get home and realize you don't have a shirt to wear with it.

At this point in my life, I'm not going to spend a lot of time focusing on dissatisfaction with who I am, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time tempering my personality. Whatever job I have next, I'm going to be somebody who wants to get things done.

I think 'having it all' is a phrase I don't particularly like. You need to have what you want. 'All' seems to me to be an imposed list, an imposed definition by society of what 'all' is supposed to be.

I want to be a better Chris Quinn. I don't want to be a different Chris Quinn.

I couldn't describe how little interest I have in men. Or I could - but I don't think that it would be appropriate.

All I wanted was to be involved in politics and government.

I hope there is nothing about me that people have a big problem with. You know, I like to think of myself as lovable.

Don't keep your own schedule - that will eat too much of your time keeping your own schedule. And when you are tired, stop. Because if you are too tired, you become not productive, and you are wasting time.

Consensus doesn't happen by magic... You have to drive to it.

There's not a lot of conversation going on in my world about softening my image. I'm pretty much who I am.

'No one sits Baby in a corner,' one of the best lines in movie history.

I'm not about talking and finger-pointing and complaining. I'm about getting things done.

Chick-fil-A is not welcome in New York City as long as the company's president continues to uphold and promote his discriminatory views.

People used to feel oddly empowered to tell me all the reasons I couldn't win. Because I was a woman. Because I was a lesbian. Because I was from the West Side of Manhattan.

When I was running for speaker, people would go out of their way to point out why I wasn't going to win: 'You're a woman, you're too liberal, you're gay, you're from the West Side of Manhattan,' which in that context was an insult.

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.

I really believe, when you come out of hiding, in whatever way you're hiding, you get to go out into the sunlight.

I've already begun to put pilot programs in place that give CUNY grads opportunities to get good tech jobs. We should expand on that so that New Yorkers are getting those jobs, because those jobs are probably one of the biggest 21st Century pathways into the middle class.

If you don't like me, life goes on, you know what I mean? But I hope you do like me. Because I think that in addition to being pushy, I'm nice.

I have a tendency toward being a micromanager.

I have a tendency toward being a micromanager. Which, the bigger the project you're involved in, the harder that becomes.