Jack Monroe Quotes

Working at the Food Bank with my kids is an eye-opener. The face of hunger isn't the bum on the street drinking Sterno; it's the working poor. They don't look any different, they don't behave any differently, they're not really any less educated. They are incredibly less privileged, and that's it.

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

I know what it's like not to have food in the fridge or money to buy more.

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.

As a young man, I lived through the Great Depression, when banks failed and so many lost their jobs and homes and went hungry. I was fortunate to have a job at a canning factory that paid 25 cents an hour.

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.

When I was a deacon, the ominous signs of the Great Depression began to appear. Tens of thousands lost their jobs. Money was scarce. Families had to do without. Some young people did not ask their mothers, 'What's for dinner?' because they knew all too well that their cupboards held very little.

After school, I got a job in a shop in Hollywood and shared an apartment with a friend. I promptly lost my job and got evicted from my apartment, and that happened several times.

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!

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.

I know what it's like to be on public assistance and to be unemployed. And I know what it's like to be evicted.

When it all got taken away, I was becoming a young man. So I had to sacrifice to leave my family... Sleeping in my car, getting an apartment for a month and getting evicted the next month. Staying in the $25, $50 hotels.

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.

The time after college and before music was really rough. I couldn't afford food. I was eating bread and butter for five months. Living in New Orleans, I couldn't afford to take care of myself. I had no health insurance.

Every day I've got to hear about unemployment and people starving.

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

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.

I grew up in poverty. For 25 years I was fed on aid.

It's really hard to be poor in New York - I was really poor when I lived in New York.

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

A lot of people don't know what it's like to actually be hungry. I do. I've also slept on the streets.

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.

My mum was a single mum on the dole.

At my lowest I was making nothing, of course.