Wes Montgomery Quotes

I am, as they say, the classic starving artist.

When I first came to Nashville, people hardly gave country music any respect. We lived in old cars and dirty hotels, and we ate when we could.

At my lowest I was making nothing, of course.

You have to spend a lot more time on the road these days if you want to make a living with music.

When we first were working, we had no money. We were all sharing this ghastly flat and we had nothing.

Like dear St. Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success.

I walked the streets of New York for two years begging for a job, and I couldn't get one.

When one has not father, or mother, or brother, and all one's friends have barely bread enough for themselves, life cannot be very easy, nor its crusts very many at any time.

Over the hill to the poor-house I'm trudgin' my weary way.

I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.

He who would remain honest ought to keep away want.

It's hard to get by just upon a smile.

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.

With poverty everything becomes frightful.

Lack of money means discomfort, means squalid worries, means shortage of tobacco, means ever-present consciousness of failure-above all, it means loneliness.

Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate; debt, which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be foregone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most.

Poverty made a sound like a wet cough in the shadows of the room.

Here we all live in a state of ambitious poverty.

Unfortunately, I saw a side of humanity I wish I'd remained blissfully ignorant of, including one driver who threw a bottle at me while I was walking my baby to the doctor on the side of the road and yelled out insults. Nurses who made nasty comments about how I should get a job (I was working two of them, in addition to being a published author). It wasn't that I didn't have a job and wasn't working. The jobs in backwoods Mississippi didn't pay enough to cover living expenses.

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

There was no sacrifice in acting for me, even when I was starving in New York. I went three days without eating. Charlie Bronson and I sold blood for $5 so that we could eat.

There was a time when I had the blues - I mean I really had it bad. I couldn't pay my light bill and I couldn't pay my rent and I really had the blues. But today I can pay my rent and I can pay the light bill and I still got the blues. So I must been born with 'em... That's my religion - the blues is my religion.

The rich know not how hard it is to be of needful rest and needful food debarred.

A guy I interviewed for Hard Times says, "What do I remember about the Great Depression? That I was hungry, that's all." Elemental things.

Dancin' in the welfare lines.