Gregory Corso Quotes

I came to Harlem from West Virginia when I was three, after my mother died. My father, who was very poor, gave me up to two wonderful people, my foster parents.

It was only for two years, and I jumped from family to family. It's very scary.

I have a family member who was in the foster system briefly, and so I've kind of grown up knowing about it myself.

All my foster homes were very good to me. But it's still not a very nice experience. It's only when you're older, you realise: we were on our own in there. As kids, you don't know what's happening. You're here. Then you're in the next house. But the families were all very good to us.

When I was 5, 6 - so you know, memories aren't that great - I remember coming home and I remember seeing all of our belongings on the street and a Salvation Army truck picking them up. We got taken to a shelter. And then we moved around a lot, finding places to stay.

I went to 13 schools in 12 years. We moved all over the place. Music was the only thing that I could get behind... I wasn't that good at socializing. I'm still not.

As a child I had dealt with a lot of loss and grief. I was constantly losing my parents, losing my home, constantly moving around, living with this stranger, that stepfather, or whatever.

Growing up, we didn't have anything. My mum wasn't well, so I was in three care homes then foster homes before me and my little brother went back to her. I was passed from pillar to post.

I grew up without a father, who was kept a mystery to me. There was a sense of uprootedness, things being one day here and the next day not; a sense anything could happen. Then, all of a sudden, my mother met my stepfather, and her life became happier, and my life changed, my name changed.

I wanted to make a film - and I've been wanting to do this for 16 years - about life in care, and bring it to the public's attention, because I had never seen anything, on TV or in the cinema, which said: 'This is how it feels to be a kid in care'.

Oh, my family lived in 21 places before I was 17.

My foster parents were very religious. They told me that they had not decided to take me in, rather that it was God that had decided it for them.

It was the rootlessness that went with being the son of an RAF officer that shaped me. I had been to 11 schools by the time I was 9.

When I was in the group homes, I saw some of the kids being moved into foster homes with the potential for adoption. I remember well asking a social worker if I could find a home, too. I was told I was 'too old' and 'no one wants to adopt a 16-year-old.' I felt hopeless and alone.

My brother and I were separated when I was a child; we went with different parents.

There are far too many children in America in need of a loving home who are shuttled between temporary homes and group shelters that fail to provide the stable, nurturing environment all children deserve.

Many people, for many reasons, feel rootless - but orphans and abandoned or abused children have particular cause.

We were so poor that my mother would often leave me in a foster home until she could raise enough money to rent rooms for us.

I've played a worrying number of orphans, children who have been abandoned or had something terrible happen to them.

Anyone dying is not easy, but certainly not a mother. Me and my brother, we stuck together. The foster families were good to me, and then my nanny took me in.

Me and my older brother were taken from my mother at the same time so we were pretty tight.

By the time I was seven, my mother and I had moved 13 times.

When I was ten, I went to seven schools in one year in Nova Scotia. Me and my mum moved there so that I could be closer to my dad, who is an ice-truck driver, but it didn't work out.

Royal Young has accomplished a rare feat in his fresh and riveting debut: he manages to recount his fascinating youth and unconventional family with a mixture of humor, scathing honesty and tenderness. Much more than simply a book about a kid who dreams of stardom, Fame Shark is a thoughtful, hilarious and moving love letter to his family and the Lower East Side of New York City.

I didn't have just one place where I could say, 'That's my home.'