Sly Stone Quotes

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

I have been down and out, living in Brooklyn, no money even for a subway, no food whatsoever. Like, I remember just sitting in my room all day - even my television wasn't working!

I slept on a friend's kitchen floor for a year and a half.

'Old Town Road' came after a period of feeling like I was out of options. I was living with my sister. She was pretty much fed up with me being there.

At the Superdome, a young man came up to me holding a baby. He'd run out of diapers. He'd run out of medicine. His baby was sick. The guy's saying, 'Help me! Take my baby.' What could I do? That's the definition of helpless.

I hate to see anybody sink. I hate to see anybody lose their dream, lose their home, something like that.

In Hanover Park they highlighted the terrible plight of backyard dwellers and the fact that year after year nothing has been done to help you: the hope and despair you all live with every day.

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.

I had spent many days hungry; had slept on railway stations at times because I did not have money to pay for a hotel room... there were moments when I felt I had compromised my dignity as a human being and as an actor.

At my lowest I was making nothing, of course.

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've written just about everything for the sake of putting shoes on the children's feet - and a bottle of gin in the cupboard.

We had nothing in hand and my father used to live on the street. The profession of acting happened to him when B.R. Chopra picked him up for a film, and my father acted just to earn money for survival.

If you don't have a place to live or money or whatever, you ask yourself, "What am I gonna do?" But my best friend stuck by me for 30 years. And he had already told me "Whenever you get out, you come live with me and my wife."

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.

Loneliness and hunger were my fortunes of creation.

I came back to the hood and got in those streets and started doing whatever it took for me to provide.

When I got to New York, I had no place to sleep. The pay from 'Sesame Street' wasn't enough to rent an apartment. I was staying on people's couches. I stayed in the dressing room until they found out. I stayed with Jim Henson and his family for a week, and I wanted to do that permanently. I didn't dare ask, though.

Acceptable food rots while we are chased from bins behind restaurants, chased from sleeping on the street, chased from relieving ourselves unless we pay for food or gas, until finally we are so hungry, sleepless, smelly, constipated and beaten-down that we simply die of lack of will to live.

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.

When I was living in New York and didn't have a penny to my name, I would walk around the streets and occasionally I would see an alcove or something. And I'd think, that'll be good, that'll be a good spot for me when I'm homeless.

The people that live in my hometown do not walk along the street with smiles on their faces. It is a desperate place, but I got out.

I was so busy fighting and so busy trying to keep everything above water that I didn't realize I was spiraling downward with nowhere to go.

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

I starved and slept on park benches. I wrapped myself in the pages of my manuscript to keep warm. For two and a half years I took odd jobs; nothing was going to deter me.