Romesh Ranganathan Quotes

My mom is a beautiful, amazing woman. We didn't have a ton of money growing up, and even, at one point, we were living on food stamps. But my mom still managed to make sure we ate healthy and were always fed nutritious meals!

We barely had lights, but my mom always made sure we had food on the table and somewhere to sleep.

We didn't have much money. My whole extended family used to help us, and buy us books and food. It was hard, and there were things I didn't want to talk about. But at the end I was a happy girl.

I didn't have much but my mum and grandma gave me as much as they could, but we weren't a rich family and we had to work hard for what we got.

Thanks to my mother, I graduated. But then we lost everything, we were homeless.

When I got to New York, I had no place to sleep. The pay from 'Sesame Street' wasn't enough to rent an apartment. I was staying on people's couches. I stayed in the dressing room until they found out. I stayed with Jim Henson and his family for a week, and I wanted to do that permanently. I didn't dare ask, though.

As you know, I'm a black girl out of the projects of New York City, raised in a single parent home because my parents divorced very very young... welfare and homeless at four and then again at 16 and just not having the things or the necessary tools that society would say I needed to have in order to be any kind of success in life.

We were so poor that my mother would often leave me in a foster home until she could raise enough money to rent rooms for us.

It would be nice if we redefined what we meant by 'war story.' If you're making $15,000 a year living in a certain area of Portland, trying to make it with three kids and no husband, that's a kind of war.

My mother really struggled when we were young. She was on food stamps and welfare. Looking back, I know we didn't have a lot, but I never felt I was at a loss for anything.

I was skint, and I had to move back to my mum and dad's house, back into the room I shared with my brother when I was a kid. I kept getting people on the streets telling me that they loved me; it didn't mean anything to me because I was still borrowing tenners off my pensioner father to go and get some chicken.

When you start off broke - and we weren't broke, we were negative broke - you never forget that. You stay appreciative.

I remember back in the days my Mom didn't have enough for Thanksgiving.

My mom raised us three boys by herself on welfare. It's not worse than anybody else's life.

Mom raised me all by herself, and although we went through our share of lean years, she always worked hard to make our home warm and welcoming.

My parents didn't have a lot of money, but we never knew that. They really did the best they could.

I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.

If you were out of a job and your kid needed diapers and your husband just left you, you would be so confused.

For a long time, I couldn't even afford food and clothing. I climbed from the very bottom of the society.

I want to thank my mom, Brenda Rose. My heart, the reason I play the way I play, just everything. Just knowing the days I don't feel right, going to practice, having a hard time, I think about her when she had to wake me up, go to work and make sure I was all right. Those were hard days.

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

It's really hard to be poor in New York - I was really poor when I lived in New York.

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.

My dad always supported me. Sometimes we didn't have anything to eat for breakfast, but if we could eat lunch and dinner, we weren't poor.

The problem with not saving is it can often mean you're - a crisis away from, as we've seen in some cases, living in your car or losing your home or - having your lights shut off.