Tobias Jesso Jr. Quotes

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

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.

Why not sit around a Beverly Hills pool collecting residual cheques? That is not the kind of life I want.

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

I may not be wealthy; I'm living from pay check to pay check, but I get to make movies, which is what I love to do.

I was not a girl who grew up buying $100 candles. I was the girl who ran out of gas on her way to an audition.

I was doing a lot of great theatre, but I just couldn't work out how to make ends meet.

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

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 had a lot of survival jobs. One was for the Witty Ditty singing-telegram company. I was in the red-and-white stripes with the straw boater hat and kazoo. Balloons. Even when you're sleeping on a friend's couch, you have to pay some kind of rent.

Being rich would be disastrous for me as a writer. I have always needed to write to pay the bills.

When you're 22, 23, living in New York, you're just scrambling to live on people's couches and in rooms that you're sure you're not supposed to be in. You're not on the lease; you're paying weird amounts of money every month trying to make it happen.

We were rather poor, but we always had what we needed.

I can't dismiss my roots as a kid growing up during the Great Depression in the ordinary midwestern town of Grand Rapids, Michigan. From the standpoint of money and material possessions, we were barely scraping by.

I was an artist - I fancied myself an artist - I sold paintings at bars to pay my rent.

I have no regrets about being poor.

Unfortunately - as I have experienced first-hand, as many artists have - there's a gaping hole between platinum and non-existent. There's no in-between.

If you're living a nice lifestyle and you have no problems, you put on our record, you won't get it.

When I first came to Seoul to start model work, I felt bad asking for financial support from my parents, so I lived in the sauna for about six months.

Growing up, we never really had money. If I wanted to get something, I had to go out and get a job.

A lot of rappers think they better than me because they saw me broke, going in and out of studios, and couldn't pay for studio time.

I was always ranked last in my class. My problem was that I would obtain a just pass and move on to the next class!

I remember being denied a protein bar that I went in to buy. I was so hungry, and it was before an audition, and I ran in and tried to buy this protein bar. And I checked my bank account, and it was negative 17 cents... And I remember getting on the phone with my mom and laughing that I have negative 17 cents.

None of us want to ever face a choice between putting food on the table or paying rent.