John Updike 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.

My father made about $25 a week. We always lived just on the edge.

There were times when I couldn't even buy a loaf of bread.

I've known what it's like to survive without a steady job. Growing up in the Philippines, I watched my parents juggle part-time jobs at the corner shop and as tailors, barely able to make ends meet for my three brothers and me.

We had a food store at the theatre and I used to pinch food. I pinched some trousers and shirts to keep me going but they would wear out. I was virtually on the breadline.

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.

I don't believe in pressure. Pressure is when you don't know where your next meal is coming from.

I had to steal to survive.

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.

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.

Things were so bad we ate rabbits that neighbours had run over and gave to us because they knew we were broke.

I used to help my dad with a stall selling eggs when I was about 12. People were so hard up they would ask for one egg. But mostly no one came by at all. It was very demoralising.

Poverty was the greatest motivating factor in my life.

The war years were the most difficult time of my life. There was real famine in Moscow. The water froze inside the houses. There was no heat.

Bonnie and Clyde grew up in absolute poverty. They didn't go to school or have any money; the only way they could figure out how to get ahead was to steal. The banks were foreclosing on everyone's homes. I think a lot of people will be able to relate to that struggle.

We all need money, but there are degrees of desperation.

There's a real sense of desperation when you grow up in poverty.

I know what poverty is.

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.

I had spent many days hungry; had slept on railway stations at times because I did not have money to pay for a hotel room... there were moments when I felt I had compromised my dignity as a human being and as an actor.

I worry about Zimbabweans. They bend, they bend, they bend, they bend - where do the people break? How long can they go on scrounging for food in garbage dumps and using the moisture from sewage drains to plant vegetables?

I was broke for more than 10 years. I remember staying up all night one night at my first company and looking in couch cushions the next morning for some change to buy coffee.

I started when I was 39 as a cabinet secretary, and so I feel like I have lived an experience in my life where I can relate to families that struggle, and are scraping by and scrounging.

I became bitter, hard, cold. I was always on a panic - couldn't buy clothes or a good place to live.