Matt de la Pena Quotes

I wanted to raise the voice of a lot of the people that I knew growing up, and this was, for the most part, poor people who had extraordinary dreams but also very amazing obstacles.

I didn't necessarily grow up in a trailer park, but there is a brief part of that in my life. So I can make fun of it a little bit. I'm not too much of an outsider, where I'm just making fun of someone.

When you grow up in abject poverty, you see people exactly the way they are.

I'm not writing about the 1 percent of people who have this fairy-tale, amazing life. I'm writing about people like me, who maybe had a rough childhood.

My people are poor and I am one of them.

We're leaving the House to people who either were born with a silver spoon in their mouth... or couldn't get better jobs in the first place.

When poverty shows itself, even mischievous boys understand what it means.

You grow up skinny in Canada; in working-class Montreal, you're definitely the underdog.

My background's working class. My parents had to work to make ends meet. We don't come from any sense of privilege.

I've seen poverty up close until I was four or five.

I understand the pain of working-class Americans because I have experienced the pain.

Having grown up a trailer park kid on welfare and food stamps, becoming jaded is impossible, although now I make a good living, which I'm not ashamed of; when you've been poor, it never leaves you.

When you grow up on the other side of the tracks, you're used to taking a few bumps.

If you don't have money or you come from a background that doesn't have money, it's harder to achieve your ambition in life. It's not that you can't, but it becomes harder. Inequality is one of the worst things that can exist in our society, so I am interested in those kind of things.

I always think that my assignment is to seek out stories that are experienced by people who don't get the ticket for Easy Street.

I am from the poor people; I represent the poor people. I like workers. I like people that suffer because these people have a different approach to life from the people that have everything and don't know what suffering is.

There is no concept more generally cherished by publishers than that of the Undeserving Poor.

Choice dependent on wealth; those are the Tory words.

The causes of crime are very complicated. But there is a very big literature, as you know, about single parenthood in crime, about race in crime, and about poverty in crime.

The thing that really struck me when I went to junior high was class. I grew up on a pretty poor street, but the school district I was in included some fine neighborhoods - so I got to know a couple of the kids from those places and went to their houses and experienced such culture shock.

Short of genius a rich man cannot even imagine poverty.

I don't come from a privileged background.

Born in a cellar... and living in a garret.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.