John Trudell Quotes

I am, as they say, the classic starving artist.

When you're a starving artist, you make do. It didn't matter that I didn't know where my rent was coming from.

Being a hungry artist, you don't have the luxury of buying whatever you want. There were years of me doing a lot of odd jobs, this and that just to make ends meet.

I was planning on being a starving artist.

In my early days, I was about 145 pounds. I was really a starving artist; the poster child for starving artists.

With all the awards I've won, you'd think that I'd at least be able to make a living. It's a really terrible situation.

I was working maybe four different jobs just to make ends meet. I was really broke. I could barely pay rent. I didn't have a car. I was riding my bike from one job to another and then to audition in between.

Whether it's New York or somewhere else, the metaphor of 'Avenue Q,' which is the place you live when you can't afford to live anywhere else - and we've all been through that in our journey. As I always say, at any moment I could be back on Avenue Q if I pick the wrong show.

You and I can be busy, and we take a vacation from work. You can't take a break from being poor. You can't say, 'Hey I've had enough of worrying about money, I'm just going to be rich for a couple of weeks until I've recovered.'

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.

As an actress for most of my life, I am profoundly familiar with poverty.

When I was playing bluegrass, I was living down in West Hollywood - starving.

When I was writing 'Withnail,' I was so busted flat that I had one lightbulb that I would carry around the house with me. I mean, really. No furniture, no money, and I was hoping to be an actor, but I could never get a job.

Like everyone, I am formed by my background, and mine was - well, we didn't have a lot of money. I didn't live in a cardboard box, but I did live in a place where, at the end of the week, the money was gone.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

After we were married, we were broke. Flat broke. Not only did we not have health insurance, we could barely keep a roof over our heads, let alone have the kind of coin to throw around on onesies and Pampers.

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

I do smaller films, I'm not getting big paydays. I feel like we're just kind of scraping together here.

Poe was plagued and haunted most of all by something pretty banal: poverty. Probably the most eccentric decision in life was to become a writer in an age when making a living at it was nearly impossible.

I can live in L.A. as a struggling artist. I cannot live in New York as a struggling artist.

I got married when I was 16 so I had to do shift-work to make ends meet.

I don't really believe in the myth of being poor but happy. At the poorest times in my life, I wasn't happy. I was just hungry.

Somehow, the French got this idea of the starving artist. Very romantic, except it's not so romantic for the starving artist.

I've always found it very sanitary to be broke.

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.