Cuba Gooding Jr. Quotes

I can remember living in the housing projects and being broke like it was yesterday.

Eventually I did that, but it took a lot of twists and turns, and there were a year or two there where I was living with no money at all - no home, no car, no nothing. I was living in somebody's garage in Los Angeles at that point - for a year.

At my lowest I was making nothing, of course.

I know exactly what it's like to not have a penny. I know exactly what it's like trying to get a job. I know exactly what it's like having bloody one tin of Ambrosia left in the cupboard. But I know I can survive.

If you're broke, you don't want to rap about being broke; you gonna rap about hustling and getting that bread.

I used to help my dad with a stall selling eggs when I was about 12. People were so hard up they would ask for one egg. But mostly no one came by at all. It was very demoralising.

It was the early 1970s and I was recently divorced. I had three kids and was totally broke. I managed to find work back east on the straw-hat circuit - summer stock - but couldn't afford hotels, so I lived out of the back of my truck, under a hard shell.

I was literally just going and applying for jobs, and I couldn't get a job, and I was getting more and more broke, and you find yourself groveling for jobs you don't even want.

I had so many beliefs against being a singer or what it takes. There was a lot of pain associated with that. The rejection of it all. I lived in a rejection state of mind. Not because of my voice; the mike never rejected me. It was harboring all those bad memories of being broke. It teaches you your worth. Nothing good comes from that.

I can tell you that when I travel the state, when I talk to people, they are really struggling, in a very real way. They're losing their jobs, they're losing their homes, they're dealing with financial challenges.

There were days when my father didn't have money for food, and we slept hoping the next day something could be got from work.

As a young man, I lived through the Great Depression, when banks failed and so many lost their jobs and homes and went hungry. I was fortunate to have a job at a canning factory that paid 25 cents an hour.

I went to college a little bit, and that didn't work out, and I didn't finish. So, I would play in bars until I ran out of money, and then I'd get a real job.

When I got the job on 'Lost,' I was a broke university student living in the crappiest part of town, with a duct-taped back window on a broken-down car. I existed on peanut butter and tea.

I know what it's like to be shoveling to pay bills. I know what it's like to not have a job.

I was a happy man, never working. Sometimes I saw days with no money to eat. It was not so difficult.

I was broke until I was 40. Really broke. I could get by, but I had nothing.

In 1843, everybody was hungry, unemployed, and conditions were very bad.

When I moved to L.A., I was penniless, absolutely beyond broke and in debt up to my eyeballs.

I was broke for more than 10 years. I remember staying up all night one night at my first company and looking in couch cushions the next morning for some change to buy coffee.

I can just remember being broke, wondering if I had any talent - really wondering whether this was all a fantasy - but I had to get out there and keep trying.

I've always found it very sanitary to be broke.

After school, I got a job in a shop in Hollywood and shared an apartment with a friend. I promptly lost my job and got evicted from my apartment, and that happened several times.

l had a job, and if you had a job in the depression you were rich.

I didn't have a dollar to my name in 2006.