Nico Santos Quotes

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 would love to be in New York, but it's really hard to be unemployed in New York. Everyone's got a place to be. In L.A., there's a system, a science to being unemployed.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I came out here with a thousand dollars to my name.

You grow up as an artist in a big city. As James Dean said, you're going to have one arm tied behind your back if you don't accept people's sexual flavors. You know, 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 was 18.

When I got to New York, I had no place to sleep. The pay from 'Sesame Street' wasn't enough to rent an apartment. I was staying on people's couches. I stayed in the dressing room until they found out. I stayed with Jim Henson and his family for a week, and I wanted to do that permanently. I didn't dare ask, though.

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 was homeless for a little bit. I was on people's couches, but it was an amazing journey. I got to make people laugh all the way.

Every day, I just thank the universe that I am as lucky as I am. Because, I went through periods of time when I didn't have a single bit of work. Months and months where I was auditioning all the time. I mean, all the time, and nothing was happening.

After graduation, I was floundering in L.A., doing stand-up comedy and working in a shoe store in the Valley.

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.

I grew up with a family that had very little and were at times homeless.

How have I lived so long? I never worried. In the '20s, there were millions of men out of work. You couldn't get a job anywhere. I wasn't worried.

I can tell you that when I travel the state, when I talk to people, they are really struggling, in a very real way. They're losing their jobs, they're losing their homes, they're dealing with financial challenges.

So struggling for work here has been very good for me, but it's also been very hard to handle rejection.

I'm in between homes right now, but my last house was dope.

At my lowest I was making nothing, of course.

I know what it's like to be shoveling to pay bills. I know what it's like to not have a job.

After school, I got a job in a shop in Hollywood and shared an apartment with a friend. I promptly lost my job and got evicted from my apartment, and that happened several times.

I remember being unemployed and walking the East Village streets for many years, constantly checking my voice mail on pay phones, hoping for an audition.

I was almost ready to call it quits - sick of doing a job and then being back on the unemployment line and trying to make ends meet. But I loved acting and didn't know what else to do.

When you haven't got a job, a joke is about the only thing that's free.

My parents were dealing with evictions and repossessions and electricity getting shut off, and I just realized that I had to get it together.

I have been down and out, living in Brooklyn, no money even for a subway, no food whatsoever. Like, I remember just sitting in my room all day - even my television wasn't working!

Tough times were when I didn't have a job and nobody called me.

Long before I achieved financial success and became the subject of a Hollywood film, I was a veteran, a single father, and a working person who was homeless.