David Lammy Quotes

My parents did everything possible. My dad has worked from eight in the morning until nine in the evening to make it possible so I can play tennis. We had to cancel tournaments because we couldn't afford to go there.

My mom, Cheryl, worked two jobs to support me. She really helped the family stay together.

[My mother] worked at thrift stores and she didn't have a high school education. She sacrificed everything she had for me and my brothers. I never went without. She showed me that she could put food on the table, buy us Jordans, we had the best clothes and she worked two-three odd jobs.

You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." To a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005

I desperately miss my girls when I am working, and I often feel guilty, but also feel the journey I am on is for them too. When I am on my 16th hour of a day and can barely keep my eyes open, they drive me forward.

It seems like I always had to work harder than other people. Those nights when everybody else is asleep, and you sit in your room trying to play scales.

Money was tight and Mum used to do two jobs to support us.

I feel like the luckiest guy on the planet. But, I literally work all day, every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and that's not an exaggeration.

When I lived in London, I worked three jobs and had such long work days.

You worked every day to earn what's on the table, literally. It was a week-to-week thing. And I wouldn't change it. I would not change it for anything.

I never had any financial support or sponsors, and so I always had to, at every level, prove myself the hard way. I was five years in Japan before I got my debut at Le Mans. And I think this is a humble way to get through as a racing driver.

Unemployment is painful.

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

I worked as a truck driver, carpenter's assistant, doing whatever it took to keep bread on the table for the family.

I look back at 1993 or 1994 when I made it to the National Championships, and I was on used skates and handmade or borrowed costumes. But my mom was there every step of the way for me: she was the one traveling with me all over the world at age 13.

I see all kinds of people work hard all over the world, and some of them are barely making it. I don't just mean subsistence farmers. I mean people in the developed world who work multiple jobs, and because the cost of health care and child care eats up almost all of the living they make.

My dad was a tree surgeon. When I was younger, he was working away five days a week for weeks on end, just trying to get as much money.

My father worked three jobs, my mother worked two, seven days a week sometimes. And they wouldn't take welfare or social assistance, they were too proud.

Poverty makes you work really hard.

My dad was an actor, and he always said that work was work; you can't turn your nose up at it. We didn't have much money when I was growing up, and he had this real work ethic, which I inherited.

My mother lost her job, so I left school to work full-time to support her.

My parents are not of this world. I've had to work multiple jobs, been in a position where I cannot pay off student loans.

My parents sacrificed everything for me. My father worked on a building site and as a driver - so many jobs. My mum was at home full-time to take care of me, my sister, and two brothers.

Mum obviously did not earn much money to feed me and my siblings. She worked hard to raise us, but there was always something missing.

People say they start from the bottom. If you want to see someone who's started from the bottom, go and look at my career. My first 10 fights, I think I paid for them myself. I've fought three times in one month.