John Steinbeck Quotes

I can go back to poverty if a situation comes. I have sailed through the worst days of my life, and I am prepared for any crisis.

In really bad times, the hungriest would gather at his door at nightfall, vying for the chance to earn a few coins to feed their families by selling their bodies. Had I been older when my father died, I might have been among them. Instead I learned to hunt.

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 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.

The Depression did more to me than being a little Lebanese kid did.

I've known what it's like to survive without a steady job. Growing up in the Philippines, I watched my parents juggle part-time jobs at the corner shop and as tailors, barely able to make ends meet for my three brothers and me.

The fight to make ends meet, keeps a man upon his feet.

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.

The possibility of physical and mental collapse is very real now... but collapse is out of the question; as a solution or even a cheap alternative, it is unacceptable. No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind.

It is bad to be poor. I shall go to the wall for bread and meat, if I neglect my business this year as well as last.

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.

These New York City streets get colder, I shoulder every burden every disadvantage I've learned to manage. I don't have a gun to brandish. I walk these streets famished.

There was no sacrifice in acting for me, even when I was starving in New York. I went three days without eating. Charlie Bronson and I sold blood for $5 so that we could eat.

War had the effect of encouraging people to try to stay alive. Poverty, too. Survival was simply too hard-won to be given up lightly.

Poverty sits by the cradle of all our great men and rocks all of them to manhood.

It really strikes me how much of your energy in America, especially if you're from a working back-ground, is spent just keeping your head above water. It really saps your grace and your strength.

I don't believe in pressure. Pressure is when you don't know where your next meal is coming from.

There's no way I would have got to see so much of the world, with my humble background, without modelling. We were penniless and hungry for most of my youth. I washed the sheets in the bathtub in my bedroom and hung them out of the window on the clothes line, which in winter was difficult as the sheets would freeze and get stuck to the line.

I had a low image of myself because I was brought up in the deep Depression.

I've experienced poverty and plenty, and there's a lesson to be learned when you're brought up in poverty.

In the Depression especially, I think you learn to face problems and not run away from them.

When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money.

I couldn't do it at all. I was never really good at it, but I can't imagine what it can be like as a fortunate person not having to deal with it. I mean, people of all ages, not just my age, 25, 35, all the way down the line.

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.