Arnel Pineda Quotes

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

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

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.

It's wrong that so many hardworking people - people working full-time, or even multiple jobs - need public assistance just to survive.

We had no money, my dad was out of work a lot, and we never owned a house. It was very hand-to-mouth.

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

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.

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.

When I was growing up, my family was so poor we couldn't afford to pay attention.

I was raised in the Depression, when there was a great sense of dog-eat-dog and people fighting over scraps.

I was a happy man, never working. Sometimes I saw days with no money to eat. It was not so difficult.

The fact is, I made $400 a week and only for 26 weeks a year. I never had any money.

I didn't have any extra money. But I can't say that I had a hard early career.

Independence feels like a luxury, where the reality is that it's hard to survive financially for so many people out there.

My mother cleaned homes and drove school buses, and when my family was on the brink of foreclosure... I started bartending and waitressing.

My mother had various jobs, from where she was regularly fired as politically undesirable. I often saw her crying and mumbling that we'll starve to death.

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

I've always been the person to look at any turmoil as temporary. I recall times where my mom was working five and six jobs, and there's still no food in the house.

We were an underprivileged family. My parents were both tailors. We got by. But we only had a few important things in our life.

My mom would get up every day at 4 A.M. and worked two jobs. I always felt I was the poorest kid on the block. I had a chip on my shoulder about being broke.

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.

I can go back to poverty if a situation comes. I have sailed through the worst days of my life, and I am prepared for any crisis.

Poverty makes you work really hard.

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