Graham Greene Quotes

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

Among poor people, there's not any question about women being strong -- even stronger than men -- they work in the fields right along with the men. When your survival is at stake, you don't have these questions about yourself like middle-class women do.

My father was raised in an orphanage, and my mother was an immigrant from Poland whose first childhood memory was of hunger. Somehow, despite all of that, I am called a member of the 'elite.' If so, I damned well earned it.

Black, poor, without a father most of my life, one of 10 children - it was actually pretty amazing I had made it to the age of 29 without a noose around my neck.

I desire an special interest in your prayers that my faith fail not in the day of adversity.

It is hard work to be good when you are very little and very hungry, and have many sticks to beat you, and no mother's lips to kiss you.

I've never stabbed, hurt, killed, stolen, anything, but I went to jail for a year. What is that? My pastor said to me the fact that I'm not living under a bridge as a crazy woman, talking to myself, is amazing.

I had, probably, a more challenging experience growing up than most middle-class chicks.

In Kurdistan, there's a lot of hardship - a lot of wars, a lot of bitter and difficult lifestyles. And witnessing all those made me a director.

In my early days in school, I had no shoes, no school bags. There were days I had only one meal... I walked miles and crossed rivers to school every day. Didn't have power, didn't have generators, studied with lanterns, but I never despaired.

I come from a world where the word 'trauma' doesn't exist, because we are too poor. I didn't have an easy life compared to the average European. But compared to the average African, it wasn't all that bad.

I was raised on the streets, in hot, steamy Brooklyn, with stifled air.

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.

I lived through the garbage. I might as well dine on the caviar.

All I'm trying to do is survive and make good out of the dirty, nasty, unbelievable lifestyle that they gave me.

If there's an enduring theme in my work, it's probably the effects of class on American life.

I would say I came from upper middle class family.

I had a very comfortable life, but there were people who spent their life in prison, whose families were destroyed.

I came out even with all the struggles I endured on Rikers Island.

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.

When you live in the Philippines or a country like that, you develop something of a very thick skin because you're confronted every day with all of the problems all around you.

I worry about Zimbabweans. They bend, they bend, they bend, they bend - where do the people break? How long can they go on scrounging for food in garbage dumps and using the moisture from sewage drains to plant vegetables?

I do come from fairly humble beginnings.

When people see what I have now, they have no idea of where I came from and how I didn't have anything growing up.

Mama tried to save us from the streets, but the streets were too strong.