Andrew Zimmern Quotes

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

We had a food store at the theatre and I used to pinch food. I pinched some trousers and shirts to keep me going but they would wear out. I was virtually on the breadline.

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 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.

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

There were days when my father didn't have money for food, and we slept hoping the next day something could be got from work.

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.

There were times when I couldn't even buy a loaf of bread.

We came from nothing really. One house. Ten people. Even days the lights was off. The worst days was not eating. Surviving off rice and toast.

Yeah, I'll basically do anything to make money for food.

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

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.

It is useless to talk virtue to a starving girl.

A guy I interviewed for Hard Times says, "What do I remember about the Great Depression? That I was hungry, that's all." Elemental things.

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.

It's frightening to think about more sanctions. When I've met North Koreans in China, they've said to me, 'You have no idea how difficult our lives are. We live like dogs.' They wake up in the morning wondering what they're going to eat for dinner.

Things were so bad we ate rabbits that neighbours had run over and gave to us because they knew we were broke.

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.

Hunger makes a thief of any man.

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.

I worry about Zimbabweans. They bend, they bend, they bend, they bend - where do the people break? How long can they go on scrounging for food in garbage dumps and using the moisture from sewage drains to plant vegetables?

Hunger is the teacher of many.