Graham Norton Quotes

I still consider myself working class. I know my circumstances have changed dramatically since I was growing up back in Birkenhead.

My father was a factory worker, and we were really poor. But everything I earned peddling papers and working in stores, he made me put aside for education.

I am from the working class. I am now what I was then. No amount of balsamic vinegar and Prada handbags could make me forget what it was like to be poor.

I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of.

My parents came from working-class, small-peasant, farm-labourer backgrounds and had made the grade during the fascist years; my father came out of the army as a captain.

My parents came from lower-class British backgrounds. But they worked hard and, without formal education, made it where they are today.

My mom grew up in poverty in Oklahoma - like Dust Bowl, nine people in one room kind of place - and the way she got out of poverty was through education. My dad grew up without a dad, with very little and he also made his way out through education.

I was not from a middle-class family at all. I did not have middle-class possessions and what have you. But I had middle-class parents who gave me what was needed to survive in society.

Other families who are poor do what they can to get out of it. My mother did not. She did not utilise her resources. She had a degree. There was something she could have done, but she actively, purposely refused that so we could have this absolutely authentic experience of the worst of capitalism: 'See? Look how bad capitalism is.'

I'm from working-class, blue-collar America, and I don't believe that people in that socioeconomic strata wait until they're 40 to have children.

I would describe myself as having a healthy income, but I sure wouldn't describe the son of a postmaster and an encyclopedia saleswoman as upper class, by any stretch of the imagination. I would describe myself as decidedly middle class. I think I'm extremely fortunate.

I came from a middle-class family. My dad was a professor; my mom was a nurse. I didn't come from money, and I didn't come from circles of power. I didn't come from the country club; I came from the town park.

I grew up on a council estate in south London; my dad was a bus driver and my mum sewed clothes to bring in extra money. My parents worked hard and were able to save up and buy a home for our family.

'Speechless' is first and foremost a show about a family that doesn't have a ton of money, but they move into a really crappy house in a really nice neighborhood so their kids can go to a nice school.

People have to recognise I'm a working-class lad. Forget what I've done and where I've been. I'm a working-class lad. I've come from nothing and I've not forgotten that.

I don't come from a rich family, but my parents are professionals.

You can't kid the public. When they see me they see I'm just a kid off a council estate - no more, no less.

I have a humble background. My dad was a coal miner. My mum worked a receptionist. I was one of the first people in my family to go to university.

I grew up working class in Atlanta.

The thing is with boxers we don't come from Cambridge and places like that, we come from council estates. So in boxing it's very, very hard.

I think Ant and I were ambitious because of where we come from. Both of us are from working-class families on council estates in Newcastle.

One of the nicest things about receiving the accolade of Australia is that, previously, the knighthood was historically for what was termed 'the establishment.' Now, this is an accolade for somebody who comes from a working-class background. Someone whose father was a truck driver and decided to buy a truck.

I grew up in a household that was a labor household. My dad was a Teamster and a milk truck driver. My mother was a secretary. Neither of them got through high school. But they worked hard and they gave me very, very important opportunities to go to school, get a good education.

The childhood poverty of both my parents and their minimal education did much to influence me and my two younger brothers in our education and career choices. One brother became a dentist and the other, a professor of anthropology with a Ph.D. degree.

There is no greater ladder into the middle class than education.