Dolly Parton Quotes

I grew up in a poor family. I had to cut everyone's hair, because we didn't have money for entertainment.

I saw certain things that I think maybe other kids are protected from. Like, I saw my parents struggling. I knew that we were cutting out coupons and buying dented cans because they were cheaper. And all our furniture was from the garbage. It was just - and to me because I was a kid, all that stuff was really exciting.

My parents didn't have a lot of money, but we never knew that. They really did the best they could.

It is difficult to describe in short the enthusiasm and devotion provoked by and given to my research. We lived almost in poverty. I used pencils, two for a nickel, and could not buy a fountain pen, when I lost mine.

We lived in just a studio apartment with just a room and a bed that came out of the wall, and my mom couldn't afford even a Happy Meal. We ate Top Ramen. I had no toys, and I had, like, two shirts, a pair of jeans, and that was it. But I had my mom to myself, and I remember it being the coolest period of time. I loved it. I really loved it.

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

Economy is too late when you are at the bottom of your purse.

My father died when I was two years old. But my mother was quite capable. She raised three children with his war pension which was peanuts. Yet we did not want for anything. We grew up with a certain parsimony, which is a nice thing. Then if life gives you more good, otherwise you get used to. I'm still thrifty.

When you’ve been poor all your life, you never really think it could be any other way. And sometimes you’re even happy, because at least you’ve got your family and your health and your arms and legs and a roof over your head.

You never know how you'll turn out till you've been down to half a dollar and no prospects.

People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt.

I'm poor, not homeless.

I was happy, I wasn't beaten, and I lacked nothing. But it wasn't what people expect - it was very much sort of pinching and scraping. I don't know how my mother did it.

I was having trouble making ends meet, and my beginnings weren't meeting either.

You know how people love to glamorize poverty? There's nothing glamorous about it. But it did make me really creative. Those days, I was literally taking t-shirts in the day and sewing them back together to make dresses for the night.

I was from a tough neighborhood, and we didn't have a lot of money, but my dad worked hard, and my mom is good at budgeting things. That made me appreciate things.

My mom grew up in poverty in Oklahoma - like Dust Bowl, nine people in one room kind of place - and the way she got out of poverty was through education. My dad grew up without a dad, with very little and he also made his way out through education.

Money was tight and Mum used to do two jobs to support us.

I prize the Depression, for instance, because I learned the value of things in the Depression that a way people who don't have to worry about such things never learned to prize it really, I believe.

My mother taught us to sell food in the market so we could pay for school. I would get up at 4:30 A.M. and start selling bread and cheese before going to class. School cost $65. The average salary was $125 a year, and with 10 kids, how are you going to pay for that?

During the Depression, my dad made radios to sell to make extra money. Nobody had any money to buy the radios, so he would trade them for dogs. He built kennels in the backyard, and he cared for the dogs.

I didn't have any extra money. But I can't say that I had a hard early career.

… there are a great many people who not only can make no budget but can barely manage to exist with their families on what they earn from day to day

I grew up in an era when money was not readily available. We were into the post-Depression years and World War II.

I didn't grow up wealthy. We couldn't even afford spaghetti sauce when I was first born, but my mom and dad worked really hard and came from the bottom up.