Kamaru Usman Quotes

I grew up learning to do more with less.

I don't live for stuff and things, and if I had to live in a cardboard box, I would put curtains on it.

I remember once in junior high school, on a Friday, my mom came home from work and said to my brother and I, 'You know, between us, we have only 27 cents, but we have food in the refrigerator, we have our little garden out back, and we're happy, so we are rich.'

I often think I am a better person because I lived for many years of my life with a flashlight. I have developed skills I did not think were possible - bathing with a cup of water by candlelight, for instance, and writing a story with a headlamp on.

To grow up under really simple circumstances, and to understand that certain things were ornamental... that made an impression on me as a child and is something I use.

Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.

In my entire life, any time I've ever lost something, I've gotten something even better going around the next corner. It's like one door closes and another door opens. As long as I can walk through the produce section in every grocery store in this country and eat the grapes that they're going to throw away, I know I can be fine.

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

We were rather poor, but we always had what we needed.

My mom had to be resourceful. She grew up dirt poor in rural Louisiana.

The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.

My mother could make something out of nothing - and everything started from scratch.

You know how people love to glamorize poverty? There's nothing glamorous about it. But it did make me really creative. Those days, I was literally taking t-shirts in the day and sewing them back together to make dresses for the night.

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.

Since I was younger I've been making the best out of nothing.

I can take hardship. I can sleep on the cold floor anytime. I can also sleep on a feather bed.

I'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit, and after they've gone, I'll get along. I started off living on gruel, and by God, I can always go back to it again.

He who knows how to be poor knows everything.

I'm a survivalist and a survivor.

If we were poor, we didn't know it 'cause I guess you don't miss what you never had. So, you know, we made do with whatever. We used to make our own toys, and we used to play with spinning tops and marbles. A pocket full of marbles, and you were rich - you didn't worry about no money.

I think one of the biggest things is I wasn't spoiled as a kid. I got what I needed. I didn't always get what I wanted. But it's good to have what you need.

I tend to kind of try to use what's in my environment to the best of my ability rather than seek out things that I don't already have.

The best place to succeed is where you are with what you've got.

Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how to get along without it.

I can't remember exactly the first thing I wrote, but one of the stories, was about a pilot whose plane crashed on a desert island, and the only other life on the island was a brown cow with yellow spots. The cow had... to survive, had taught itself to eat and get nutriments from sand. I guess, I've always been interested in adaptability and taking whatever life hands you and running with it.