Sherman Alexie Quotes

Poverty is a lot like childbirth - you know it is going to hurt before it happens, but you'll never know how much until you experience it.

Poverty is not a lack of character. Poverty is a lack of cash.

If you've ever really been poor, you remain poor at heart all your life.

It is bad to be poor. I shall go to the wall for bread and meat, if I neglect my business this year as well as last.

I would say that many of the characters in my stories do not live in true poverty - they are not out on the street; they are not wondering if there will be anything to eat in the next week. They are people who are at the lower echelons of the economic strata.

Most people are poor at some time in their lives. But poverty is no excuse for committing crime.

People who didn't know the depression just don't know what being poor means.

Put all other sufferings on one side of the scale, and poverty on the other, and poverty would be heavier.

I have way more experience being poor than I do having money.

Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.

Being poor is only romantic in books.

I was born to poor because of honest parents.

Economic privation proceeds by easy stages, and so long as men suffer it patiently the outside world cares little.

The worst thing about poverty is not the actual living of it, but the shame of it.

Poverty of course is no disgrace, but it is damned annoying.

I mean, when you grow up in the inner city and you grow up in a single-parent household, that's - those are humbling times, you know?

You and I can be busy, and we take a vacation from work. You can't take a break from being poor. You can't say, 'Hey I've had enough of worrying about money, I'm just going to be rich for a couple of weeks until I've recovered.'

In the Depression especially, I think you learn to face problems and not run away from them.

There is nothing worse than being ashamed of parsimony or poverty.

There's not much money in Tallahassee. Not many people can leave Tallahassee because they don't have the means.

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.

My parents had always preached the virtues of hard work. But hard work is one thing; economic struggle is another.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

I come from a poor family.

Poverty us no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.