Lynne Truss Quotes

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 have been down and out, living in Brooklyn, no money even for a subway, no food whatsoever. Like, I remember just sitting in my room all day - even my television wasn't working!

It was the early 1970s and I was recently divorced. I had three kids and was totally broke. I managed to find work back east on the straw-hat circuit - summer stock - but couldn't afford hotels, so I lived out of the back of my truck, under a hard shell.

My background's working class. My parents had to work to make ends meet. We don't come from any sense of privilege.

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.

Eventually I did that, but it took a lot of twists and turns, and there were a year or two there where I was living with no money at all - no home, no car, no nothing. I was living in somebody's garage in Los Angeles at that point - for a year.

At my lowest I was making nothing, of course.

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

When you haven't got a job, a joke is about the only thing that's free.

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.

Moving to Mumbai was difficult, as survival was a major concern. I was not from a very well-to-do family.

I walked the streets of New York for two years begging for a job, and I couldn't get one.

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.

Mama's in the factory, she ain't got no shoes. Daddy's in the alley, he's looking for food.

Poverty of course is no disgrace, but it is damned annoying.

My mom Marina and I were poor and hungry. We could sometimes not afford to eat - seriously. We lived together in a small town, called Berdyansk, in Ukraine. I was an only child. I don't think we would have survived if there had been more kids.

Mine was quite a working-class childhood with very little money, and my father was out of work a couple of times, which had quite a traumatic effect.

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

I came from nothing. We didn't have money, so I started work at 14 because I really needed the money.

I see my friends, my family, my cousins work all day long for very little money, and if I have this problem of not being able to wall on the streets, it's not a big deal.

I grew up in an underprivileged home.

When I was born, the economy wasn't in a great state; it was the Depression, and my father had to be quick to try and find work.

The hard part that I had to go through in life, period, is living in poverty and not being able to get what I want.

If you were out of a job and your kid needed diapers and your husband just left you, you would be so confused.

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