Alice Ripley Quotes

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.

As my family saw them, men were untrustworthy, weak, and selfish. Our mother taught us to get along without them, to get along without much of anything, and to live well and have fun anyway.

My childhood was bittersweet in many ways. We moved around a lot. By the time I was 10, I had travelled thousands of miles, often on my own. My parents were like my friends, so it felt like I didn't really have parents at all. But in a crazy way that was very liberating. It forced me to be independent, maybe a leader, and certainly a survivor.

You can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing.

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

I had to learn to toughen up and fend for myself. You'd think when you have a lot of brothers and sisters, they'd come to your aid and rescue you a lot of times, but for us it wasn't really like that. It was tough love.

I know it's different today than when I was growing up, and that's fine. But I have never been somebody, even when I was earning $19,000 a year, I never ran around whining and moaning about what things cost. What they cost was what they cost. And if I couldn't afford it, then I had to find a way to afford it or forget about it for now. It's just the way it was.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it.

My father...made us shop at Goodwill. I found things to wear and got Best Dressed (in the yearbook) two years in a row. I had lemons, so I made lemonade.

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.'

Americans are generally very self-sufficient and I think generally averse to pretension, just as I am.

Raising myself and caring for my brothers and sisters allowed me the benefit of a lot of information that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten. I had to be frugal, thoughtful, resourceful. I didn't have anyone to tell me, 'You can't.'

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.

Kenya, being a third world country, from a young age your eyes are open to the real world. I'd like to think growing up there taught me to stand on my own two feet, make my own decisions about what I wanted to be.

I would rather clean than beg.

I'm a good example of someone who can come to Hollywood and keep their feet on the ground with all the rock stars, all the drama that goes with being here. It's still important to pump your own gas and to be able to vacuum.

I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.

Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.

I have to thank my mum for kicking me out at 16 and making me stand on my own two feet - that's how I got here.

I was from a tough neighborhood, and we didn't have a lot of money, but my dad worked hard, and my mom is good at budgeting things. That made me appreciate things.

It don't take a lot to make me happy. I'm not spoiled like that.

I grew up without a lot of money and my parents grew up with far less money. And that's kept me in line. Really in line.

There is something to be said for people who have to work hard, be creative, produce what they have with little - or no - means. Those of us from poor homes have the advantage of thinking for ourselves and of knowing that when times get hard, things could always be worse.