I am proud of where I came from, and I am proud of what I've been able to achieve through hard work and perseverance. And I guarantee you that anyone who tries to say otherwise hasn't walked a day in my shoes.
I'm a very competitive person. You won't change things unless you are prepared to fight, even if you don't win. But I do hate losing.
When I first put my hat in the ring, several very tried and true and loyal Democratic activists from our community said, 'What? She's not a Democrat. She's a Republican.' I took that as a compliment, you know, that people didn't necessarily know what my ideology might be because I wasn't driven by that.
I am running for my Senate district in 2014 and looking forward hopefully to earning the confidence of my community once again and being reelected for that seat.
We believe in honoring our mothers and fathers and keeping our smallest residents - our children - healthy. The politicians in charge of Texas now clearly don't. Perry has refused to even consider expanding health care coverage in Texas because he cares more about scoring political points than he does about our Texas families.
The truth is that at age 19, I was a teenage mother living alone with my daughter in a trailer and struggling to keep us afloat on my way to a divorce. And I knew then that I was going to have to work my way up and out of that life if I was going to give my daughter a better life and a better future, and that's what I've done.
I think you have to be careful. You have to know exactly what is going to resonate with voters. And you can't get ahead of that. You have to be very careful with your approach.
As a senator from the only true swing district in the Texas Senate, I've been targeted by the GOP for my outspoken criticism of their extremist attacks on public education and voting rights, to name just two examples.
Americans have the right under the Second Amendment to own firearms, and that is not going to change.
I'm happy in Lululemon, with a glass of red wine, watching HGTV.
Let's make sure that we are working for age-appropriate sex education in our school system.
Texas has waited too long for a governor who knows that quid pro quo shouldn't be the status quo. It's time for a governor who believes that you don't have to buy a place in Texas' future.
Most people would identify with the fact that we tend to be defined by the struggles we came through than by the successes. And certainly for me that's true.
Harvard was the most intimidating experience. I felt so out of my league there.
I always stand out by the voting lines on Election Day, and I can't tell you how many people say, 'I've never voted for a Democrat in my life, but I'm splitting my ticket for you.' They're more engaged and thoughtful than we give them credit for.
Let's face it, Obama is not a hugely popular political figure in the state of Texas.
We need to get away from labels. That's the way people talk in Washington, D.C. - through labels, through ideological frames, through partisan frames.
Enough to using Texas as a political laboratory for testing far-right ideas. Enough to using Texas as a workshop for fattening the wallets of their special interest friends and supporters. And enough of politicians listening only to each other, rather than real Texans.
I think that any woman who had a conversation with me and had an opportunity to truly understand my life story wouldn't view it through a critical lens. There are people, of course, in the world of politics, who look for things to be critical about. But those people are already against you.
It's great to talk about how good things are now. But we can't sit on our laurels and expect that our time will sustain itself if we don't do a better job on issues like education... It's absolutely the case that the low cost of college tuition that I was able to enjoy and the financial aid I was able to receive made my education possible.
