Anna Deavere Smith Quotes

As a kid growing up in public housing, I didn't always get show up at the first day of school with a new backpack full of supplies. Having the school supplies I needed would have made me feel more prepared and ready to learn.

It is hard to apply oneself to study when there is no money to pay for food and lodging. I almost never explain these things when folks are asking me why I don't do this or that.

Growing up in inner-city Glasgow, it sometimes seemed to me money hadn't been invented.

When I was growing up, my family was so poor we couldn't afford to pay attention.

I grew up in poverty. For 25 years I was fed on aid.

Like a lot of black people, I grew up straight po'. Wasn't no question about whether we was po', either. If you really wanted to know, all you had to do was look in our refrigerator.

No one should ever be forced to choose between food and education, or medicine and shelter when they don't have the resources. It's very unfair.

… there are a great many people who not only can make no budget but can barely manage to exist with their families on what they earn from day to day

I grew up very poor in rural Alabama.

I didn't have life that good coming up. I wasn't born with a lot of money. We weren't dirt poor, but we weren't rich. All I knew was struggle.

As a child, I have seen what poverty is, and I try, to the best of my limits, to ensure that no kid should be deprived of his ambitions.

I've lived in poverty.

Poverty is no vice, but an inconvenience.

Poverty is not really as much of an obstacle to educational expansion as it's sometimes made out to be.

It's no secret that my family was very, very poor, and I don't want that for my life or my children's life certainly. But some might say I could relax a bit more and know that that's not going to happen to me. I'm not going to end up in a car.

When you come from an under-privileged background, oftentimes, you feel a little overwhelmed by your education or your lack of.

You're in a situation where you have limited education opportunities, you don't have any money, you can't get a job; what are you going to do? You're going to go back to this criminal network that you actually made while you were in prison.

I grew up in an era of pretty severe poverty. My parents weathered the Great Depression, and money was always a very big concern. I was weaned on a shortage mentality and placed in foster homes largely because there simply wasn't enough money to take care of the most basic of needs.

The hard part that I had to go through in life, period, is living in poverty and not being able to get what I want.

When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money.

I started life in a poor family and could not even afford a proper tertiary education.

Every day, families in the United States face the stark choice between a roof over their heads and food on the table. Buying health insurance, owning a home, and saving up for college are just too far out of their reach.

When you look at guys who get recruited, most of the best athletes, they come from poor families. I don't forget. I was a junior looking through my mother's stuff and looked at her bank statement, and we had $30 in the bank.

I didn't finish college; my parents didn't graduate college - we didn't have a pot to piss in. I'm from Newark, New Jersey. I had to work. I didn't think it would be possible for me to be an artist without having a job.

Growing up, I didn't know anything about money other than we didn't have any.