Bill Dedman Quotes

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?

Nothing in baseball can bring me down to the level where I was growing up in Pine Bluff, crying and broke. This is fun for me. Whenever you see me slumping, nah, I don't get upset; I'm all right.

Basically, I was a kid growing up with a single mother in Brooklyn.

Poverty makes you wise but it's a curse.

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.

I had a pretty rough childhood. I was raised for a few years by my single mom, until she married my stepdad a little later.

I experienced the sharp end of a tough time, living with a single parent, my mum, and she was really struggling to get a job. These are the things that form your views in life. They are established when you are growing up and being raised. That stuff doesn't really go away; that stays with you.

Black, poor, without a father most of my life, one of 10 children - it was actually pretty amazing I had made it to the age of 29 without a noose around my neck.

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

I was born in Nizhny Novgorod to a very poor family and unfortunately my father and mother separated when I was very little.

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

I came from abject poverty. There was nowhere to go but up.

I came from poverty and was part of those circumstances.

I lived for two years in an abandoned gas station with no running water and no electricity after my parents got divorced and my stepdad couldn't get a job. So I think a lot about families like mine who were middle class and struggled. So that experience really drives my philosophy.

I was 10th of 11 kids in an alcoholic, abusive, poor family. We all want things that we can't have. And I found comedy.

I had a very difficult childhood. I was surrounded by people who had both parents, which made me feel different. Having a bit of a rougher existence early on, it made me appreciate the work ethic that my grandparents instilled in me.

Poverty was the greatest motivating factor in my life.

No, I was two years older than the other guys. I was a war baby. My family were a lot poorer than they were. I'd had to fight too hard for anything I had in my life and to smash things up for me.

As a child growing up during the Korean War, I knew poverty. I studied by candlelight.

Growing up, we didn't have anything. My mum wasn't well, so I was in three care homes then foster homes before me and my little brother went back to her. I was passed from pillar to post.

The reason for this project comes from my childhood, that is clear to me. I did not have any toys. So, I played in the bricks of ruined buildings around me and with which I built houses.

I maybe missed money in my childhood, but I didn't miss love, that's for sure. My dad wasn't there, but I can tell you not even once did I think I was missing something.

I grew up in a broken home. My dad was out of the home when I was five years old. I never knew him very well.

I grew up in an apartment that would have made a trailer look really decadent and nice. Pretty much the only dependable thing I had was books.

I'd go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked.