Andre Dubus III Quotes

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

It's not hard to tell we was poor - when you saw the toilet paper dryin' on the clothesline.

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

When I was studying at the Neighborhood Playhouse, I would overdraft my bank account and not have enough money to buy groceries. But I also discovered how to cook with very limited resources.

I was eating beans by candle light for a decade.

My wife, Sharon, and I started with nothing when we got married. I was driving a 1902 Pinto and eating off a card table.

People never knew we were poor, but out of that poverty came the most incredible inventions - board games, recipes... we never stopped inventing.

I've always found poverty a source of strength.

The reason for this project comes from my childhood, that is clear to me. I did not have any toys. So, I played in the bricks of ruined buildings around me and with which I built houses.

My father, who was a hair colourist, died when I was young, so my mother had to work very hard. But at the same time, I do believe that if you have everything, it is easy to make a dinner. When you only have flour and water and olives and potatoes, you have to be much more creative, and that's what my mother is all about.

You think in a different way when you don't have any money. The joy of poverty is that you use your imagination to come up with stuff.

We were never a family that had a lot. We had enough, but not a lot.

I think being on a constraint with money makes you much more creative.

I used to live off of nothing.

I think I'm just like a lot of people who had nothing. We had to amuse ourselves, so we had to become amusing.

My mom had to be resourceful. She grew up dirt poor in rural Louisiana.

I was born in 1946, so I was born on the tail end of when everything was deemed important. You made things to last. If you came from a poor family, there was only one can opener.

I traveled with my mother, Lela, and there was never enough money. I always had to roll down my silk stockings and carry a doll when we bought train tickets so I could go half-fare. If we had $3, we always figured how to tip for the trunks and still eat.

There is something to be said for people who have to work hard, be creative, produce what they have with little - or no - means. Those of us from poor homes have the advantage of thinking for ourselves and of knowing that when times get hard, things could always be worse.

I remember that at the beginning of the month, the kind of menus my mom and father would prepare for us would have fish, chicken. But at the end of the month - because my father would be waiting for paycheck - the refrigerator would get empty. I remember that without a lot of food left, some of the best meals happened right there.

It was a real hand-to-mouth existence in those early days - I'd have whatever dry cereal there was in the house for breakfast, 30 cents to spend on lunch and a hot dog for dinner. I did that for years. So there was definitely a hunger in me, of various kinds, to succeed.

I don't live for stuff and things, and if I had to live in a cardboard box, I would put curtains on it.

We didn't have money for toys, so I made my own.

When my parents were dating, they were very poor, so my dad couldn't take my mom out. They would go to the grocery store and pick out funny looking vegetables. When I grew up, we'd still go and find the ones with personality.

We were so poor. Every item of clothing came from a thrift store.