Am I pushy? Yep. Do I like taking ‘no’ for an answer when ‘no’ means New Yorkers aren’t going to get something they need? No. Do I push back and crack some eggs? Absolutely. – Christine Quinn
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. – Christine Quinn
You might as well go through life the way you want to. If what you want is to be engaged and forceful, to ‘lean in,’ well, do that. – Christine Quinn
When you stand up there and do a press conference, it’s a very preoccupied moment. You’re standing in front of cameras; people are watching you; it’s not so easy to be at ease. – Christine Quinn
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. – Christine Quinn
My mother would organize huge parties for my elementary school classmates. To prepare, she would go back to the bakery in her old neighborhood of Inwood and get special shamrock cookies. Hawaiian Punch was served and we had shamrock napkins. It was a lot of fun. – Christine Quinn
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. – Christine Quinn
It would be thrilling, obviously, to be able to have a woman and an openly LGBT person as the mayor of New York City. – 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. – Christine Quinn
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.’ You just kinda, like, stuff it away until – well, some people stuff it away forever. – Christine Quinn
I’m in a position where, if you have the ability, you should use it well. To get things done. – Christine Quinn
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. – Christine Quinn
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.’ – Christine Quinn
I think it’s really important to realize that small businesses are often the portal for immigrants into the New York City economy. I think we have something like 40,000 small businesses that are immigrant-run in New York. – Christine Quinn
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. – Christine Quinn
I’m tough, I’m pushy, I’m really loud. I used to spend a lot of time thinking about it. But we only have so much brain capacity, so if I’m spending part of my brain thinking about how I’m acting, A, I’m not spending all of my brain doing, and B, I’m not actually in that moment. – Christine Quinn
People have said I can come off a little trial-lawyerish. I tell people I never actually became a lawyer, but I play one at City Hall. – Christine Quinn
I have always said I’ve had a big personality, and I’ve always said I’m a pushy broad, and I’ve always said I want to get things done. – Christine Quinn
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. – Christine Quinn
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. – Christine 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. – Christine Quinn
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. – Christine Quinn
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. – Christine Quinn
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. – Christine Quinn
