Anthony Burgess Quotes

You and I can be busy, and we take a vacation from work. You can't take a break from being poor. You can't say, 'Hey I've had enough of worrying about money, I'm just going to be rich for a couple of weeks until I've recovered.'

Very few people can afford to be poor.

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 didn't take the money route because I saw my parents struggle for survival.

Poverty of course is no disgrace, but it is damned annoying.

I couldn't do it at all. I was never really good at it, but I can't imagine what it can be like as a fortunate person not having to deal with it. I mean, people of all ages, not just my age, 25, 35, all the way down the line.

I've known the panic of financial struggle. I didn't grow up with money at all, and my family has certainly known the panic of, 'Oh, gosh, where's the next bit of money coming from?'

How can a man help breaking the law when he don't have money to live on?

I didn't have any extra money. But I can't say that I had a hard early career.

I did just about anything to pay the rent for a while.

We were under a lot of financial pressure when I was growing up.

You cannot understand what it means to be poor until you have suffered it.

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

I used to listen to 'Ready to Die' around the time I dropped out of college. I was scrambling for work and money.

I've experienced poverty and plenty, and there's a lesson to be learned when you're brought up in poverty.

I came from nothing. We didn't have money, so I started work at 14 because I really needed the money.

No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.

I had to steal to survive.

When I first came out, I was a film student, and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did.

We always had money problems. Sometimes I would lie awake at night wondering how to pay the rent.

The usual complaint is, 'I have no other way of earning a living.' The harsh reply can be, 'Do you have to live?'

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

I was starving before I hit Journey. Very, very rough times... I didn't know where the next pay check was gonna come.

I've got to love the film, not the money. Because I know what it's like not to have money - you still survive.

What fun it would be to be poor, as long as one was excessively poor! Anything in excess is most exhilarating.