Schoolboy Q Quotes

When I was a kid out here in L.A., I was homeless, I didn't have any money and I was living in my car. I wasn't averse to going down to Santa Monica Boulevard and letting a guy buy me a sandwich. Know what I mean?

I used to sit in front of McDonald's and ask people for dollars to get me a cheeseburger. It was bad.

I had spent many days hungry; had slept on railway stations at times because I did not have money to pay for a hotel room... there were moments when I felt I had compromised my dignity as a human being and as an actor.

I've seen my family work so hard and come up, and I've seen it all get taken away. I had to man up, and part of that was sleeping in my car, getting an apartment for a month, and getting evicted the next month. Staying in the $25 - $35 hotels. I just never panicked. I stayed focused and I never surrendered.

I walked the streets of New York for two years begging for a job, and I couldn't get one.

I know what it's like to be hungry. I know what it's like to be homeless. I know what it's like to have to choose between breaking the law and feeding yourself. I know what it's like to take meals at shelters and at Salvation Army facilities. I know what it's like to beg for money on the streets.

Do I gotta go sell me a whole lotta crack for decent shelter and clothes on my back?

It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is a still less pleasant thing not to sup and not to know where one is to sleep.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it.

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.

Acceptable food rots while we are chased from bins behind restaurants, chased from sleeping on the street, chased from relieving ourselves unless we pay for food or gas, until finally we are so hungry, sleepless, smelly, constipated and beaten-down that we simply die of lack of will to live.

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 had to succeed. Failure means I would have to be homeless again.

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.

For a long time, I couldn't even afford food and clothing. I climbed from the very bottom of the society.

The rocky time came right after I left school. I spent a lot of time at night navigating the streets of Paris trying to find something to eat.

I've lived places these guys can't defecate in.

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 started writing lyrics out of desperation. I was broke and wondering where my next job, my next meal was coming from, although I had had several successful revue songs on Broadway.

A lot of people don't know what it's like to actually be hungry. I do. I've also slept on the streets.

Eventually I did that, but it took a lot of twists and turns, and there were a year or two there where I was living with no money at all - no home, no car, no nothing. I was living in somebody's garage in Los Angeles at that point - for a year.

I was homeless for about 8 months, I refused to live with my dad or anyone for that matter. So I stayed somewhere that had no hot water, ever, no heat, I told myself I have to be strong and get through it on my own.

I was broke for more than 10 years. I remember staying up all night one night at my first company and looking in couch cushions the next morning for some change to buy coffee.

I spent eight years living without heat and hot water.

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.