Bel Kaufman Quotes

People don't speak of hunger when they know what it is to be hungry.

Kelly, there are people in Somalia who would die for a banana.

Perhaps it is only when people are somewhere near the starvation level that they have anything to sing about.

And who is any of us, that without starvation he can go through the kingdoms of starvation?

In Cuba you get a quarter of a chicken per month. They give you one bread per person a day. So, it makes your life really tough.

There is no humiliation more abusive than hunger.

Even that was all consumed after two days, and the patients had to try to choke down fresh fish, just boiled in water, without salt, pepper or butter; mutton, beef, and potatoes without the faintest seasoning.

The next summer, 1794, corn grew dear, and distress began in our land.

My first novel is loaded with food references largely because my cupboards were bare, and I was writing hungry.

How fared the Irish artisan—how fared the Irish peasant? Where one pined, as he yet pines, in your beggared cities, the other starves, upon your fruitful soil.

Hunger is the teacher of many.

In Spain, there is a good deal to see but not much to eat.

Bread did not have its usual nourishing power and strength because the grain was not nourished by the warmth of summer sunshine. Hence those who ate it, even in large quantities, were hungry again after a little while. There can be no doubt that the poor wasted away when even the rich were constantly hungry.... Four pennies worth of coarse bread was not enough to feed a common man for one day. The usual kinds of meat, suitable for eating, were too scarce; horse meat was precious; plump dogs were stolen. And, according to many reports, men and women in many places secretly ate their own children....

I was born in 1928, so in 1943, 1944, we had the war in Rome. There were a lot of hardships, a lack of food, many shortages. So when I worked with the Americans, the English, and the Canadians soon after the war, when I played with them, they paid me with food. That will give you an idea how widespread poverty was at that time.

I will never forget the hunger I used to feel.

We lived in the mountains for 14 months without much food. People were dying from starvation.

I was living on a loaf of bread a week.

There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be.

And one thing to be remembered: it is not that the people who are poor, starving, become frustrated with life - no. They cannot become frustrated. They have not lived yet - how can they be frustrated? They have hopes. A poor man always has hopes that something is going to happen - if not today then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow; if not in this life then in the next life.

One does not go to Moscow to get fat.

Hot Potato is a very different game when the people playing are starving.

However, everything has an end, everything passes away, even the hunger of people who have not eaten

At the end of day, people are starving and, if people are starving and thirsty and they need to keep their families alive, people become desperate quickly. There are real world examples of this.

You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger.

The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads.