Joe Budden Quotes

There was a long time where I was an 'artist' in quotes, who had no money. But I guess back then I also never had a girlfriend.

To be famous and broke is hard.

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

My son tried to work in films and he ultimately gave it up, he finally couldn't make a living, he couldn't support himself. He worked all the time and he didn't make enough money to have a house, have an apartment.

With all the awards I've won, you'd think that I'd at least be able to make a living. It's a really terrible situation.

New York reminds me of what my career was like when I lived here, so when I walk through the streets, I remember when I had ten bucks in my pocket and all I could eat is Chipotle.

I worked out of Hollywood for 10 years and I had my heart broken half a dozen times, so I know all the things that can go wrong.

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

Whether it's New York or somewhere else, the metaphor of 'Avenue Q,' which is the place you live when you can't afford to live anywhere else - and we've all been through that in our journey. As I always say, at any moment I could be back on Avenue Q if I pick the wrong show.

I still think of that guy I was without a wife or kids, and I still want to entertain that guy. The lonely guy, the frustrated guy, the guy with no money - this is the guy who needs to laugh.

When I was playing bluegrass, I was living down in West Hollywood - starving.

I had to sell my house and make a lot of sacrifices to become a writer, and it sucks not to get taken seriously.

I had a wonderful mother who wanted my sister and me to have everything, even though money was a very prominent thing we didn't have. But we had a very happy childhood - pretty much ideal, in fact.

I'm basically a starving artist.

Because my dad died when I was young, and I have a severely disabled sister, I couldn't really push the envelope at home.

Raising a family is difficult enough. But it's even more difficult for single parents struggling to make ends meet. They don't need more obstacles. They need more opportunities.

Most of the groups I worked with 30 years ago are either dead or dead broke. And it's a shame.

I lost my daughter at 21. I had to give her up because I was broke, no place to take her, no money to take her. That was very traumatic.

Geniuses sometimes end up very unhappy, without a penny.

Somehow, the French got this idea of the starving artist. Very romantic, except it's not so romantic for the starving artist.

My hunger and desperation, being an actor, an out of work actor - my memory of that is as fresh as an open wound.

Father knew me not. All my aspirations in life were a sealed book to him, as much as his peculiar religious experiences were to me.

I don't know anybody who doesn't have a lost decade.

I had to live on $17,000 a year until I was 33, because I was a failed artist until I was 29, when I made my first short film that went to Sundance.

Most of my childhood memories of my father are of being ignored. I was his namesake, but nothing I did ever pleased or even interested him. He enjoyed telling me I couldn't do anything right.