Javed Ali Quotes

When I first came out, I was a film student, and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did.

When Kogi started, I was dead broke, selling tacos on the street just to survive.

I know exactly what it's like to not have a penny. I know exactly what it's like trying to get a job. I know exactly what it's like having bloody one tin of Ambrosia left in the cupboard. But I know I can survive.

I've worked as a labourer, driven taxis and school buses, and been a car mechanic - whatever I could do just to get by. But it does mean that I know a little bit about a lot of things.

My mom lived by herself with two kids. Sacrifice was the name of the game at our house.

It was the early 1970s and I was recently divorced. I had three kids and was totally broke. I managed to find work back east on the straw-hat circuit - summer stock - but couldn't afford hotels, so I lived out of the back of my truck, under a hard shell.

It was a real hand-to-mouth existence in those early days - I'd have whatever dry cereal there was in the house for breakfast, 30 cents to spend on lunch and a hot dog for dinner. I did that for years. So there was definitely a hunger in me, of various kinds, to succeed.

I used to live off of nothing.

I've always been the person to look at any turmoil as temporary. I recall times where my mom was working five and six jobs, and there's still no food in the house.

Living in Flint, poverty is an obstacle that you have to fight through. I always had to fend for my brother and sister - I was always the one to sacrifice my meals so that they could eat.

Moving to Mumbai was difficult, as survival was a major concern. I was not from a very well-to-do family.

I was poor. I struggled big time, living hand to mouth so I could be the kind of artist I want to be.

All this could go tomorrow, and I would still know how to function, because I never had nothing before. I went through the struggle - it was a rough life.

The fight to make ends meet, keeps a man upon his feet.

I am, as they say, the classic starving artist.

I remember as a little boy I ate one meal a day and sometimes slept in the street. I will never forget that and it inspires me to fight hard, stay strong and remember all the people of my country, trying to achieve better for themselves.

As an actress for most of my life, I am profoundly familiar with poverty.

I came to New York with $500 and I had to live on that, but thankfully I was taken up by photographers quickly.

I starved and slept on park benches. I wrapped myself in the pages of my manuscript to keep warm. For two and a half years I took odd jobs; nothing was going to deter me.

When I am made fun of in the press I just remember those days when I'd come home to find that the water had been turned off because my mother couldn't afford the bill. Suddenly, everything feels easier.

It takes a lot of energy and creativity to make such screwed up lives carry on. And the kind of will people have to survive, year after year, dealing with that stuff, is weirdly impressive.

I was the seventh of nine children. When you come from that far down you have to struggle to survive.

A lot of times when people become successful, people don't really understand what they had to do or the sacrifices they made to do that, or they assume that they had money. This is coming from, like, a kid who was broke and lived with roaches and a single mom in Dorchester.

I was raised on government cheese. As an adult, in my first marriage, my husband and I worked real hard just to go bankrupt. I happened to write some jokes about it. I did real well for myself.

All I'm trying to do is survive and make good out of the dirty, nasty, unbelievable lifestyle that they gave me.