Carmen Yulin Cruz

“When I was in school, I was too short to erase the blackboard. It was my job to put away the chairs.”

“I don't have the freaking energy to write a memo. I'm out there saving lives.”

“I wanted to be mayor, but my party didn't want me. I was perhaps too liberal.”

“I often say to my friends that I felt too Puerto Rican to live in the States; then I felt too American to live in Puerto Rico. So when I settled back in Puerto Rico in 1992, I had to come to terms with all of that.”

“When someone is bothered by someone claiming lack of drinking water, lack of medicine for the sick, and lack of food for the hungry, that person has problems too deep to be explained in an interview.”

“Yes, there is racism. There is discrimination. Mr. Trump may have the most powerful job in the world, but that does not make him a respectful person.”

“When you're drinking from a creek, it's not a good news story. When you don't have food for a baby, it's not a good news story.”

“I want to make sure that people understand that we know the difference between President Trump and the good-hearted people and the good-natured people of the United States. We know they're not one and the same.”

“My job is to make life better for people, and you cannot make life better if you are in a helicopter. You can't make life better for them if you can't touch them.”

“People don't realize they have the power. People don't realize that if they come together, there are more of them than those who occupy the seat that I'm in right now.”

“Politics is a rough game, and sometimes as females we are taught that you have to play nice. Sometimes you can't play nice.”

“I am done being polite. I am done being politically correct. I am mad as hell, so I am asking the members of the press to send a mayday call all over the world.”

“There are people who do everything for a calculative political motive. My only motive is a human motive.”

“While the American people have had a big heart, President Trump has had a big mouth, and he has used it to insult the people of Puerto Rico.”

“What really is nasty is showing your back to the Puerto Rican people.”

“You don't fight injustice by asking to become part of the system that committed the injustice against you in the first place. That's like a freed slave striving to become a slave owner.”

“If President Trump were to say, 'I'm going to go to San Juan to see that nasty mayor,' I would receive him with open arms because democracy is larger than me.”

“I don't have time for politics. There is a mission, and that is to save lives.”

“Sometimes you have to shake the tree in order to make things happen. And if that has a political cost, I will take it, as long as it saves lives.”