Marco Rubio Quotes

I would say that many of the characters in my stories do not live in true poverty - they are not out on the street; they are not wondering if there will be anything to eat in the next week. They are people who are at the lower echelons of the economic strata.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

I have way more experience being poor than I do having money.

I'm proud that I've never stopped writing about being poor.

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

People are trying to figure out how to pay bills and make ends meet. They don't want to turn on the TV and say, 'What is this crap?'

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.

For the vast majority of Americans who work hard and play by the rules, paying the bills may be hard some months, but it's something we always do.

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.'

There is nothing worse than being ashamed of parsimony or poverty.

Every day, families in the United States face the stark choice between a roof over their heads and food on the table. Buying health insurance, owning a home, and saving up for college are just too far out of their reach.

When you look at guys who get recruited, most of the best athletes, they come from poor families. I don't forget. I was a junior looking through my mother's stuff and looked at her bank statement, and we had $30 in the bank.

So people have been hurting and I understand that. And it doesn't give them comfort or solace for me to tell them, you know, but for me, we would be in a worldwide depression.

In Latin America, you don't do things for the money because there is no money.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, 'Joey, the guy in Olyphant's out of work, it's an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law's out of work, it's a recession. When you're out of work, it's a depression.'

Poverty us no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.

There's something very soothing about the simplicity of doing what's right in front of you: paying the rent, buying groceries, and when there's a little extra for a treat like cinnamon rolls, whoopee! When you live paycheck to paycheck, you only have so much to lose.

I'll always be poor in my mind.

If you must know, my parents came from pretty hardscrabble backgrounds in the southern Midwest. I certainly didn't grow up poor, but I did spend my 20s and early 30s juggling temp jobs and choking on massive student-loan debt.

It's hard for me to understand how working-class people support themselves.

I was born on the other side of the tracks, in public housing in Brooklyn, New York. My dad never made more than $20,000 a year, and I grew up in a family that lost health insurance. So I was scarred at a young age with understanding what it was like to watch my parents lose access to the American dream.

I grew up with no money. No money. I always struggled and had the sense that there was this other class of people who went to college - this was when I was younger.

Like a lot of black people, I grew up straight po'. Wasn't no question about whether we was po', either. If you really wanted to know, all you had to do was look in our refrigerator.

You lose your individuality a huge amount when you have no money, and I certainly had that experience.