Jerry Reinsdorf Quotes

When you grow up how I grew up - with nothing - anything that you have is a lot.

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

My background wasn't one blessed with all the luxuries in life. Nothing is forever and I realize that.

My father was in the army, and there wasn't too much money. Yet, we learnt to enjoy the small pleasures of life, to look at the positives.

Although I grew up in very modest and challenging circumstances, I consider my life to be immeasurably rich.

When one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

It really was hand-to-mouth and you can say, 'Poor little me, how dreadful, what a deprived childhood', but I didn't feel that way at all. It's all about the attitude at home.

When I look back I can't believe how my parents managed, but the cliche is true. We didn't have money, but we were rich in so many other ways.

I come from nothing. I come from sleeping in the kitchen with my family with the oven open to keep us warm during winter, you know? When you come from that background, all this extra stuff is just... extra stuff, you know?

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

It became motivation as opposed to something else - the thing about poverty is that it starts affecting your mind and your spirit because people don't see you. I chose from a very young age that I didn't want that for my life. And it very much has helped me appreciate and value the things that are in my life now because I never had it.

When you start off broke - and we weren't broke, we were negative broke - you never forget that. You stay appreciative.

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 would like to thank my parents in Vergaio, a little village in Italy. They gave me the biggest gift: poverty.

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.

You live your life day by day and find ways to get through it. You grow up through things that are challenging and you find the joy. You realize there are so many people that have it much worse and remind yourself. I have been very blessed.

There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay.

When I am made fun of in the press I just remember those days when I'd come home to find that the water had been turned off because my mother couldn't afford the bill. Suddenly, everything feels easier.

It's not a bad idea to occasionally spend a little time thinking about things you take for granted. Plain everyday things.

I'm thankful to be breathing, on this side of the grass. Whatever comes, comes.

My mother was making $135 a week, but she had resilience and imagination. She might take frozen vegetables, cook them with garlic, onion and Spam, and it would taste like a four-star dinner.

Our pleasures were simple - they included survival.

I was a happy man, never working. Sometimes I saw days with no money to eat. It was not so difficult.

When people see what I have now, they have no idea of where I came from and how I didn't have anything growing up.