Ruth Rendell Quotes

I don't think it's good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

I grew up with no money. No money. I always struggled and had the sense that there was this other class of people who went to college - this was when I was younger.

I just thank God that I didn't grow up with so much money or privilege because you had to create ways to make it happen.

I'm tired of people on trust funds telling people on food stamps how to live.

I feel like money is an interesting thing when you don't come from it.

There's no future in being poor.

There's only one thing money won't buy, and that is poverty.

Poor people have more fun than rich people, they say; and I notice it's the rich people who keep saying it.

I was poor. When you're poor you work, and when you're rich you expect somebody to hand it to you. So I think being reasonably poor is very good for people.

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any.

Coming from where I came from, it was unimaginable to ever be wealthy. That was just too far out of my reach.

I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.

It seems to me that most people are interested in reading about characters who are richer than they are.

The ability to take advantage of freedom and democracy is proportional to the size of your bank account.

It's not in our nature. Americans have never been a people that drive through a nice neighborhood and say, 'Oh, I hate the people who live in these nice houses.'

Coming from where I come from, I didn't have the luxury of having a trust fund. Or money from generations. Or the luxury of hoppin' into the family business, you know?

The beauty of not growing up middle class is that you don't think like the middle class. You don't have anything to protect, you know what I mean?

I grew up in a lot of different places. I always saw the bigger picture. I was around rich kids with country houses and private jets. No disrespect to those people, but I never thought they were super geniuses. I couldn't see how I wasn't going to have those things, too.

You and I can be busy, and we take a vacation from work. You can't take a break from being poor. You can't say, 'Hey I've had enough of worrying about money, I'm just going to be rich for a couple of weeks until I've recovered.'

I know I'm in the exceptional position of having money but I didn't have it for many decades.

And very often the influence exerted on a person's character by the amount of his income is hardly less, if it is less, than that exerted by the way in which it is earned.

I came from nothing. I came from the projects and welfare and ended up a millionaire with no frame of reference. I was bound to hit a wall sooner or later.

A lot of people around me were really staggeringly rich, which I never have been. I walked in between the raindrops of real money, but I've stayed happy.