Cat Stevens Quotes

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.

From the age of 11, I was cleaning floors, washing dishes, making sandwiches and being a cashier. Survival was the name of the game. Life was so hard that I had to struggle to keep up my standards. Under these conditions, I didn't think about science too much.

I didn't have life that good coming up. I wasn't born with a lot of money. We weren't dirt poor, but we weren't rich. All I knew was struggle.

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.

I was very poor and I was a waitress, and it's hard to be a poor waitress in New York.

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.

It was a real hand-to-mouth existence in those early days - I'd have whatever dry cereal there was in the house for breakfast, 30 cents to spend on lunch and a hot dog for dinner. I did that for years. So there was definitely a hunger in me, of various kinds, to succeed.

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.

When Kogi started, I was dead broke, selling tacos on the street just to survive.

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'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.

My dad was a civil servant before he retired, and my mum worked, too. We could not always get three meals in a day; sometimes we'd struggle.

I've lived in poverty.

I was poor my whole life.

Moving to Mumbai was difficult, as survival was a major concern. I was not from a very well-to-do family.

I was struggling, I was hungry, I was a freelance copy editor but had very little work.

The fight to make ends meet, keeps a man upon his feet.

When I was young, times were hard. When I got older it was worse.

Times were so hard it was difficult to feed and lodge humans, much less animals.

Poverty snatches the reins out of the hand of piety.

The world around you is not equipped to provide the help you need to make it through this often treacherous journey.

I've seen my family work so hard and come up, and I've seen it all get taken away. I had to man up, and part of that was sleeping in my car, getting an apartment for a month, and getting evicted the next month. Staying in the $25 - $35 hotels. I just never panicked. I stayed focused and I never surrendered.

All sorrows are bearable, if there is bread.

The obstacles are great and the suffering is great and people have got to make a living.