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.

For better or worse, when you're running for mayor, there's a little bit of a spotlight on you.

Anybody that I can work with that will help improve the lives of New Yorkers, I will work with that person.

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.

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.