Clea Duvall Quotes

Painting pictures didn't make me a lot of money. I have to eat.

When Kogi started, I was dead broke, selling tacos on the street just to survive.

I know exactly what it's like to not have a penny. I know exactly what it's like trying to get a job. I know exactly what it's like having bloody one tin of Ambrosia left in the cupboard. But I know I can survive.

In simple terms, I realised that food is the most fundamental need for a person. In difficult economic times, people's priorities change, and they might be willing to do something that secures for them the lowest possible weekly food bill.

All I ever wanted to do was be able to pay my rent.

It was the early 1970s and I was recently divorced. I had three kids and was totally broke. I managed to find work back east on the straw-hat circuit - summer stock - but couldn't afford hotels, so I lived out of the back of my truck, under a hard shell.

Their life is about getting enough money to put food on the table to feed their children, and that's it.

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.

…it would be much better to enable every man to earn his own living, instead of being driven to the awful necessity of stealing and then dying for it.

Independence feels like a luxury, where the reality is that it's hard to survive financially for so many people out there.

For me, I went from showering at the YMCA in L.A., eating chicken sandwiches and ramen noodles if lucky, and going from couch to couch. I'm a real story. I know the struggle.

I've done so many jobs. As an actor, you have to. I didn't have my parents footing the bill when I moved to New York. I moved here with, like, 300 bucks. I was a bike messenger. I was a waiter. I was a bartender. I worked in a consignment shop for high-end designers.

Growing up, we never really had money. If I wanted to get something, I had to go out and get a job.

None of us want to ever face a choice between putting food on the table or paying rent.

We were poor and lived modestly, but we always had food on the table.

Yeah, I'll basically do anything to make money for food.

Moving to Mumbai was difficult, as survival was a major concern. I was not from a very well-to-do family.

It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for to-morrow.

Do I gotta go sell me a whole lotta crack for decent shelter and clothes on my back?

A guy I interviewed for Hard Times says, "What do I remember about the Great Depression? That I was hungry, that's all." Elemental things.

Poverty breeds a lot of things. When people are desperate and trying to survive, they do drastic things.

I don't believe in pressure. Pressure is when you don't know where your next meal is coming from.

Some people think that poor people are lazy. Actually, it takes a lot of work to survive when you are dirt-poor.

Saving nickels, saving dimes, working 'til the sun don't shine, looking forward to happier times.

I just decided that I wasn't going to gain anything by going to school, since we couldn't afford it anyway, so I left school very early and went to work and progressively did things.