Eileen Myles Quotes

I have way more experience being poor than I do having money.

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

Very few people can afford to be poor.

I can remember living in the housing projects and being broke like it was yesterday.

Poverty us no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.

People who didn't know the depression just don't know what being poor means.

My mom didn't have a lot of money.

You cannot understand what it means to be poor until you have suffered it.

I was one of the poorest people in America.

For a good part of my childhood, we were super poor and lived in government housing. I don't characterize the American dream as being successful and having a lot of material wealth to show for it. I did fine without it for a really long time.

I never felt poor. Our family euphemism was that we were broke, which I think psychologically gave you a different feeling. There were people far worse than we were.

The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.

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.'

Like a lot of black people, I grew up straight po'. Wasn't no question about whether we was po', either. If you really wanted to know, all you had to do was look in our refrigerator.

As someone who grew up in tough circumstances, I know that being on public assistance is not a spot that anyone wants to be in.

Poverty is not a disgrace, but it's terribly inconvenient.

My parents didn't have any money.

I come from a family that doesn't have a whole lot of money.

I've worked with and talked to poor people my entire life, being in the pawn shop business.

I come from a working class family. We barely had anything.

I didn't grow up in the slums or anything that dire, but I know what it is to grow up without having money or being able to support family.

Growing up low income and poor, I didn't have the best relationship with money.

I didn't have money growing up.

I was having trouble making ends meet, and my beginnings weren't meeting either.

Footage of people camped out at Best Buy or elsewhere is not remotely a celebration. Rather, it's a reminder of just how economically distressed a large percentage of our populace is.