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Queens is famous throughout the world for diversity and tolerance. But really it's what we have in common that makes our neighborhoods work, our students succeed, and our families able to care for children and grandparents as they can.

I would encourage more development in the boroughs outside of Manhattan as well. I think it's great that this natural emergence has occurred in the lower part of Midtown, but there's tremendous potential in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island as well.

I grew up in a semi-attached row house in Queens in New York. And my family and my grandparents and my father's from Brooklyn, and so you're essentially an outer boroughs kid, you're growing up.

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.

It's a nice neighborhood, like the one I left. My home borough is Brooklyn and Queens.

I grew up in the projects in Queens, and we were really poor.

It's difficult because Manhattan is so fantastic, and it's 9 miles away, and all these cool rich people live there and have great lives, and you live in a semi-attached row house in Queens.

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

The great thing about living in New York is the constant change of things. It inspires me to keep moving, push forward, question ideas.

That's the great thing about New York, there's always something to do.