Mstislav Rostropovich Quotes

Hunger can bring out the worst in us.

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

Hunger is the teacher of many.

It is impossible to describe the suffering and misery on every side. The only food was a mixture of treebark, roots and clay.

Sometimes, you have to remind yourself that some people are just trying to find something to eat.

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with a few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing...You get your happiness where you can. You reach a point where you're at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth. Why? Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish

Hunger gnawed at her empty stomach again and she said aloud: 'As God is my witness, and God is my witness, the Yankees aren't going to lick me. I'm going to live through this, and when it's over, I'm never going to be hungry again. No, nor any of my folks. If I have to steal or kill - as God is my witness, I'm never going to be hungry again.

The heat of the bread burned into my skin, but I clutched it tighter, clinging to life.

It is useless to talk virtue to a starving girl.

A guy I interviewed for Hard Times says, "What do I remember about the Great Depression? That I was hungry, that's all." Elemental things.

I used to walk to the Washington Monument from North L Street Northwest. And I was so hungry at times, I would stop and look into the trash cans, and if there was a half a sandwich, I would take that sandwich and eat it. It was just a matter of survival. I didn't think much of it, but it was just the way things were.

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.

I had to steal to survive.

To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.

Hunger makes a thief of any man.

When people are hungry, when a mother or father is facing a child that they can't feed, you can't ask that family to lay down their arms.

There was a point when I almost gave up. I couldn't feed myself. I couldn't feed my pets.

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!

I worry about Zimbabweans. They bend, they bend, they bend, they bend - where do the people break? How long can they go on scrounging for food in garbage dumps and using the moisture from sewage drains to plant vegetables?

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....

Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture …

… the unhappy Peasant cannot survive in his humble shelter; today pigswill is his only nourishment; what was once lavished on swine is now shared between man and beast. The People ask only for bread; they are even willing to pay for it with the sweat of their brows: at least let them eat it without watering it with tears.

The Lord only knows how many times I let my children go hungry rather than take secretly the bread I liked not to ask for.

I don't just live in a bubble in Los Angeles. I'm on the road all the time. I say hello to people everywhere. That way, you get to see what despair is around the holidays. People are making terrible choices: Do I have heat in the winter or food on the table? Decisions between filling the gas tank or buying a gift for a kid.

I knew when I left school, my stomach would probably hurt from having nothing to eat, and I would be going back to those same circumstances that were breaking me.