CHRISTINE QUINN

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.

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

Congressmember Weiner has shown just a pattern of reckless behavior, an inability to tell the truth, and what New Yorkers deserve is a mayor with a record of delivering for them, of vision, and a level of maturity and responsibility.

I couldn't be more proud of my work as a progressive.

To get things done, you have to get people together.

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.

It would be thrilling, obviously, to be able to have a woman and an openly LGBT person as the mayor of New York City.

At times, you need to be forceful to get things that are stuck unstuck.

I'm in a position where, if you have the ability, you should use it well. To get things done.

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.

New Yorkers have real issues, and they deserve to have a mayor that is prepared to work with them to solve the challenges they have, reduce the problems that they have, and they deserve to have a mayor's race that is focused on them.

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

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

I'm just not gonna let up until I know I've done absolutely everything I can for New Yorkers.

I'm going to do whatever I have to do to help a New Yorker, whether it's a girl on the street or a tenant in a housing development.

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 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 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'm a lesbian. Yup. Hundred percent. Hundred percent. I remember being in college, and I had fallen in love with this woman, and I remember sitting in my dorm room saying out loud to myself, like, 'You have enough problems. You are not gonna let this happen.'

At the end of the day, somebody someday is going to say something about you. At least you can look back and say you lived the way you wanted to.

My favorite app is 'StumbleUpon,' because it just gives you interesting things that are sometimes exactly the stuff I'm interested in and sometimes just silly and funny.

Sometimes I yell, sometimes I raise my voice. I am trying to do it less, because it's not always attractive. It's not always the right thing to do.

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.

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.

There will be a moment in life, whether you're forceful or not, where someone will label you something that is negative.