Michael Tubbs Quotes

I was like any other inner-city kid with a chip on his shoulder because his daddy and his mommy wasn't together.

I'd go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked.

To me, I'm the epitome of what a ghetto child is: I was raised by a single parent; I stayed in apartments my whole life; I don't think I've ever cut the grass.

I just grew up a poor black kid in Alabama with a single mom and two brothers.

I did grow up poor. My mom managed to get a job as a custodian at our church, and it was really just a favor for her, and my dad's an electrician - just a blue-collar family, and the house was usually falling apart.

I come from where Mike Tyson came from. I come from right across the street from Jay-Z. I didn't have a pond in my backyard. I saw violence.

My father was an urchin that lived in Hell's Kitchen. He was part of a family of nine. I mean, there were times that were better and worse, but mostly, by the time we got to L.A., they'd lost whatever they had. And it was a sad time. And both he and I became truck drivers for different companies.

I was from a poor Jewish family in the South Bronx. My father was a plumber, but when I was 16, he got sick and I had to take over. Being a plumber in the South Bronx wasn't fun.

Sammy Sosa grew up without a father in the back of a converted public hospital in San Pedro de Macoris, a dusty seaside town in the Dominican Republic. His father, Juan Montero, died when Sosa was 5.

I was always the new kid in school, I'm the kid from a broken family, I'm the kid who had no dad showing up at the father-son stuff, I'm the kid that was using food stamps at the grocery store.

Let's remember the children who come from broken homes, surrounded by crime, drugs, temptation, their peers having babies out of wedlock, but who still manage to get a good education despite the many obstacles they face every day.

When I was growing up, my family was plagued by poverty. My mother, a single parent, worked around the clock to make sure her children - me, my five brothers, and three sisters - could eat and have a safe place to sleep. We hardly saw her.

Growing up in Flint, Michigan, I saw so many kids from my school end up in jail or unemployed, and gangs would hang out and cause trouble in my neighborhood. I had to learn how to protect myself, because it didn't feel like anyone else was protecting me.

I grew up with pretty much nothing - in the hood, the ghetto - whatever you want to call it.

We didn't have a whole lot of cash growing up. My mom was a single parent for a while before my stepdad came into the picture.

Because I grew up in a single parent home with my mom, growing up, things weren't always the best.

My father left me when I was 6. My mother tried to take care of all of us on public assistance.

I experienced the sharp end of a tough time, living with a single parent, my mum, and she was really struggling to get a job. These are the things that form your views in life. They are established when you are growing up and being raised. That stuff doesn't really go away; that stays with you.

My parents divorced when I was eight; I never really knew my dad, and my mom raised my older sister and brother and me alone. It was challenging.

I love a web series. But to me, it does the girl in Detroit a disservice who just watches television. It does a disservice to the girl on the south side of Chicago who doesn't go online.

I'm from the south side of Nigeria, a place called Port Harcourt City... No one ever makes it out of there. I wanted to put it on the map.

My home life, growing up, was like tumbling inside a washing machine as I shuttled around the middle of Kentucky with my mother. She was never content to stay in one place, or with one man, for too long. She was as smart as she was independent, though, and always landed some job that brought in a little money.

I come from a family of eight on public assistance, my parents were separated. My mother struggled, my father struggled.

My dad was well known on the streets, shall we say, and he had a different lifestyle, which could spill into the home setting. Being exposed to that at a young age was difficult.

I didn't get to train because I was raised by a single mom. There were three of us and it was just too expensive to pay for me to do martial arts practice.