Jerome Charyn Quotes

I'm from Long Beach - not the best area in the world - and I had a lot of ghetto friends growing up.

I'm from Brooklyn. I grew up very poor- seven people, four rooms. My dad had no education.

I mean, when you grow up in the inner city and you grow up in a single-parent household, that's - those are humbling times, you know?

My family was actually homeless for several years when I was a kid. It's a bit unusual for a member of Congress.

Mobb Deep's music, we represent poverty. That's what made us. That's who made us. That's who brought us up.

My children didn't have my advantages; I was born into abject poverty.

But hey, when you live in Watts, you need a little smack to get by, you know what I mean? You need something soft and comfortable in your life, 'cause you're not going to get it from what's around you. And society isn't going to give it to you.

I grew up in an all-black neighbourhood in Decatur, Georgia - a kinda lower-middle-class area.

I grew up in Inglewood, L.A., and South Central. I was always humbled by my situation. I would go on set and come home to my neighborhood and my block to my friends, and it would be a whole other story.

I grew up in a semi-slum area in Gavipuram, Guttahalli.

I come from where Mike Tyson came from. I come from right across the street from Jay-Z. I didn't have a pond in my backyard. I saw violence.

I grew up on 135th Street. I grew up on the poor side of New York. I grew up in Harlem.

If I grew up in 'da hood,' it would make my story so much more interesting - if I had something to escape from. I had a pretty good life. My parents weren't rich; they weren't poor. I wasn't trying to escape from anything. It was always just the pursuit of something cooler.

I started writing because I saw such a huge lack of complex stories about the inner city.

I didn't grow up in the worst neighborhood. It wasn't the best either.

I grew up on a council estate when I was younger.

I grew up in the hood in Miami in a poor neighborhood.

Sometimes you almost have to laugh to keep from crying to deal with the pain associated with the 'hood.

It was a pretty rough neighborhood where I grew up The really tough places were over around Third Avenue where it ran into the Harlem River, but we weren't far away.

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

Well, I grew up in a tough neighborhood.

I was in the heart and soul of Baltimore. I definitely felt a connection to the people. They're really hard-working people that want to have a better life. And I saw the struggle that exists there.

I grew up in an underprivileged home.

I grew up in Burbank - but not the Burbank of valet parking and TV studios. In the late 1950s, there was a small apartment complex on Elmwood Avenue that rented mostly to families on welfare. I lived there from age 3 to 11 and again from 14 to 18 with my mother, Shirley, and my younger sister, Toni.

You grow up skinny in Canada; in working-class Montreal, you're definitely the underdog.