Bam Adebayo Quotes

My mother really struggled when we were young. She was on food stamps and welfare. Looking back, I know we didn't have a lot, but I never felt I was at a loss for anything.

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

When I was little, I remember rehearsing starving so that when I got to New York I would know how to do it.

I'm lucky to be alive. It's a blessing to tell my story, you know.

You don't forget where you came from. I came from nothing. I was in Marseille in a bad area. We didn't have anything. We were rich in love.

I've been fighting for my life before and sleeping in cars and trying to find a place to lay my head. I've had situations where I've had nowhere to go. This is the easy part. I overcame life.

If I can make it through homelessness, I can make it through anything.

Thanks to my mother, I graduated. But then we lost everything, we were homeless.

I lived on the street myself.

I'm really thankful to be alive. If you get to know me, I'm a person that's always smiling and always joyful and I've been that way since I was born because of the struggles I went through. I was supposed to be number eight that died so I'm always thankful.

I seen the worst of the worst. I deserve every blessing I receive I'm from the dirt.

Coming from prison, you're more appreciative. Somebody gives you a bottle of water, you're like, "Thank you." Because that water means something. It might not be too good. It might not even be drinkable, but you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.

My father died when I was 10; my sister got polio a couple of years later and was paralyzed. So there I was - my sister in a wheel chair, my father gone, and my mother a quiet little mouse. You see, it was the '30s in the South, so my mother was not prepared to cope. So I was scared to death. And being that scared, everything afterward became a struggle not to go down the drain. Struggling became a way of life for me.

Nobody appreciates deliverance like those who've nearly been destroyed.

If you have not tasted poverty, you will not be able to manage blessing when it comes. If you have not tasted humiliation, you will not be able to manage honour when it comes.

I used to walk to the Washington Monument from North L Street Northwest. And I was so hungry at times, I would stop and look into the trash cans, and if there was a half a sandwich, I would take that sandwich and eat it. It was just a matter of survival. I didn't think much of it, but it was just the way things were.

It always made me sad that there were kids who didn't have homes.

The thing is, I don't take anything for granted anymore - my family, my music, you name it.

I always have this image of a woman running across a desert carrying children, trying to find water and food, not knowing when they'll get that. And her feet are slashed up from the dry, hard earth... Even when I'm uncomfortable, sometimes in pain, or just cold... I think, 'Thank God for what I've got.'

I would never wish my upbringing on anyone... but I wouldn't take it back for the world.

In difficult times, it's so hard to look around and to see what to be grateful for.

I have survived and possibly I should not hope for more than that.

I was definitely an at-risk kid growing up.

I'm thankful to be breathing, on this side of the grass. Whatever comes, comes.

I had a very difficult upbringing.