Jewel Quotes

In my early days in school, I had no shoes, no school bags. There were days I had only one meal... I walked miles and crossed rivers to school every day. Didn't have power, didn't have generators, studied with lanterns, but I never despaired.

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.

Raised by an irresponsible mother during the Great Depression in the Jim Crow south, my father was on his own from the age of 13.

My family was actually homeless for several years when I was a kid. It's a bit unusual for a member of Congress.

My family didn't have money, and I think it made me fearless. I'm willing to try everything and not be afraid because what's the worst that can be happen? It might not work out, but I can't be worse off than when I was a kid.

When I was a kid, I had to fight for everything.

My dad grew up in a mud hut and studied by candlelight. He was 14 when he got a scholarship to Russia. He was super clever - the cleverest person. He landed in 5ft of snow, and was alone at 14, studying science and engineering. He didn't have a bed, and he slept on a table.

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've said this before: a homeless guy in Detroit has more mojo than a millionaire in Jacksonville.

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 showed up in L.A. with $500 and a backpack and I stayed at a shelter, so nobody handed me anything. I worked for every single thing that I have.

My childhood had its challenges, like everyone's. It imbued me with certain things and took away others. It made me very determined.

There are people much less fortunate than us, and I don't mean people hungry sleeping in the streets either.

Poverty is the schoolmaster of character.

You walk past people in streets, or they serve you in shops, and you know nothing about the horrors they may be living with.

I grew up homeless, you know, lived in and out of U-Haul trucks and, you know, apartment houses, friends.

I had to fend for myself from the time I was 17 years old. I was a high-school dropout. I wasn't quite living on the streets, but I didn't have a lot of hope.

There is no disgrace in working. There was no silver spoon around at the time I was born.

I didn't know what it was not to work hard as I grew up.

I certainly wasn't able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.

Let's remember the children who come from broken homes, surrounded by crime, drugs, temptation, their peers having babies out of wedlock, but who still manage to get a good education despite the many obstacles they face every day.

My mother and I took over abandoned buildings to sleep in.

If we provide 400 new beds, we get 400 new tramps.

If you had looked at my life when I was 14 years old and said, 'Well, what's going to happen to this kid?' you would have concluded that I would have struggled with what academics call upward mobility.

Behind every locked door on Skid Road are a thousand stories.