I saw a relationship between what I did for my full-time job and I did as a contribution to the community. This need to take all of the diversity out there, and all of the opinions out there, and as a mayor try to assemble and hear everybody and then see if we can craft a creative solution.

It was important, even if we didn't win, that a view point be expressed that reflected a lot of North Carolina.

I want to see us move past the politics of fear, which is driving so much of what's happening in Charlotte, in North Carolina, and across this country.

Stay engaged. Don't become so focused on what your specific career is that you forget that there's a community you live in.

And if you end the day not doing anything except caring about yourself, that's one more day lost to making this a great community.

If there are no stakes, there is no genuine possibility in what you're creating. Because the only way for there to be no stakes is if it's already been done.

For us to do great work in the world, for us to create on the level where it matters—and if there are no stakes it does not matter—so there have to be stakes because we want to create something that matters.

We have to go into a place of mystery for what we do to matter. No mystery, no possibility.