Sue Townsend Quotes

Maybe poverty is a special case of something else. That something else is 'scarcity,' and anyone who has the experience of 'having very little' experiences the same psychology.

I totally remember that: being 25 and unemployed and trying to stretch each cappuccino for 60 minutes.

The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.

Nobody can ever make enough money for as many poor relatives as I've got. Somebody's got a sick kid, or somebody needs an operation, somebody ain't got this, somebody ain't got that. Or to give the kids all a car when they graduate.

There's not much money in Tallahassee. Not many people can leave Tallahassee because they don't have the means.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

I was working maybe four different jobs just to make ends meet. I was really broke. I could barely pay rent. I didn't have a car. I was riding my bike from one job to another and then to audition in between.

Growing up low income and poor, I didn't have the best relationship with money.

I grew up pretty poor - not poor compared with people in India or Africa who are really poor, but poor enough so that the worry about money really cast a pall over your life a lot of the time.

I grew up in a household where my mom made $16,000 a year. I know the struggle. I know how to keep those things in perspective, and I do keep it into perspective.

Growing up, I wouldn't say I was poor. But my parents, although we lived in a nice, middle-class home, they had their struggles.

My parents were always living from pay cheque to pay cheque. They were always struggling.

What's happened to society is we've become really pretentious. But there was a time in my life where I really had to choose between boiling potatoes and paying my gas bill, so I'd buy a can of potatoes.

The problem was money and the indignities of life without it. Every stroller, cell phone, Yankees cap, and SUV he saw was a torment. He wasn't covetous, he wasn't envious. But without money he was hardly a man.

Show me one couple unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show you ten who are wretched from other causes.

In the richest country in the history of the world, this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4,000, but health insurance premiums are higher, food prices are higher, utility bills are higher, and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before.

Poverty of course is no disgrace, but it is damned annoying.

Footage of people camped out at Best Buy or elsewhere is not remotely a celebration. Rather, it's a reminder of just how economically distressed a large percentage of our populace is.

I was just a regular kid in poverty, struggling.

How can anyone live off of minimum wage?

You and I can be busy, and we take a vacation from work. You can't take a break from being poor. You can't say, 'Hey I've had enough of worrying about money, I'm just going to be rich for a couple of weeks until I've recovered.'

No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.

When I was a kid in Houston, we were so poor we couldn't afford the last 2 letters, so we called ourselves po'.

The hard part that I had to go through in life, period, is living in poverty and not being able to get what I want.

While some people are certainly seeing economic benefits, many others are unemployed, underemployed, without health insurance and struggling to make ends meet.