Jerry Garcia Quotes

Sometimes you almost have to laugh to keep from crying to deal with the pain associated with the 'hood.

I couldn't do it at all. I was never really good at it, but I can't imagine what it can be like as a fortunate person not having to deal with it. I mean, people of all ages, not just my age, 25, 35, all the way down the line.

If a kid is born into a tough situation with no means of dealing with it, you end up with kids who are mentally ill and have no way of reaching out.

I learnt in South America and in Africa that people who have really big problems in the ghetto always keep a sense of humour and remain positive. If not, you go down.

I took to writing at an early age to escape from meaninglessness, uselessness, unimportance, insignificance, poverty, enslavement, ill health, despair, madness, and all manner of other unattractive, natural and inevitable things.

When I was 19 years old, both of my parents died in the same year; my mom of cancer and my dad in a car accident. Through the next two or three years and a series of bad decisions - all my own, I might add - I ended up literally homeless, before that was even a word. I even slept occasionally under a pier on the Gulf Coast.

I was in the heart and soul of Baltimore. I definitely felt a connection to the people. They're really hard-working people that want to have a better life. And I saw the struggle that exists there.

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.

I was lucky to come from a difficult area. It teaches you not just about football but also life. There were lots of kids from different races and poor families. People had to struggle to get through the day.

We were very poor and my family lost everything during the war - our home and our identity. But I'm a believer in luck and think the social conditions you're born into provide the opportunity for you to prove your luck. And I suppose I've been lucky.

Even when a person has all of life's comforts - good food, good shelter, a companion - he or she can still become unhappy when encountering a tragic situation.

It's always a struggle growing up in Akron.

Whenever people are faced with any sort of adversity... they tend to gravitate toward things that make them comfortable, and things that they feel are important.

Ghettos and barrios and abusive homes and trauma wards may produce scarred souls; they can cripple more human spirits than they strengthen.

Growing up in New Orleans and just being in a poverty-stricken neighborhood gave me that same fire that Eazy had to separate himself from what could have ended up being such a bad situation.

What I find curious is that I ever became a writer at all. I grew up in the South Bronx, the land of poverty and petty hoodlums.

Reading was my escape growing up in Ohio. Both of my parents lost their jobs when I was a teen, and it was hard. But I always had my books. Reading gave me a way of living different lives.

I'd had to cope with a lot of death and illness in my family from a young age, and that maybe gave me a bleak outlook on the world.

In Brazil, I didn't have it easy growing up.

When you grow up on the other side of the tracks, you're used to taking a few bumps.

When you grow up in poverty and learn how to survive it, it's something that stays with you forever.

You had to be tough to survive in my neighborhood.

I was very lucky that I didn't end up a basket case.

we each devise our means of escape from the intolerable.

Oh dear, life is pretty tough sometimes, isn't it?