Claire McCaskill

I'm the only United States Senator in the country that I'm aware of that's had the far left up on TV and the far right up on TV against me at the same time. ”

I started in the mailroom, literally, as an intern... in 1974. The legislator I was working for at the time said, 'I want you to get your law degree and come back here and get elected and be the first woman governor.' I kind of took that guy seriously - I thought that sounded like a pretty good idea. ”

Along with my colleagues Mark Warner and Sheldon Whitehouse, I have been working to end the process of secret holds, which is when senators anonymously block legislation or nominations without explanation. ”

When you work in the United States Senate, and you are around people of all different ideas and beliefs, you realize that what our Founding Fathers did that was so genius, is that they made the Senate the place where compromises are supposed to happen because of the makeup of the Senate. ”

I'm going to work with Republicans when they do things I agree with and I'm going to fight Republicans when they're doing things that I think are damaging. ”

I've got a really hard election. If you had a really hard election and it was after Labor Day would you go to North Carolina to a bunch of parties and glad-handing or would you stay home and work as hard as you know how to convince Missourians they should rehire you? ”

If you look through history, all of the great work we've done in Congress has been around a table of compromise, when it comes to the most difficult problems. ”

My first obligation is my job. It's very hard to really get into campaign mode when you've got to focus on doing the work. ”

You have to be willing to offend in order to make progress. ”