Charlie Austin Quotes

We didn't really feel poor. You don't know that as a kid, but we really didn't have any cash. When machinery broke down, we didn't have money for parts, so we did our best to fix it.

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

I was happy, I wasn't beaten, and I lacked nothing. But it wasn't what people expect - it was very much sort of pinching and scraping. I don't know how my mother did it.

I can remember standing in a W.P.A. line with a gunny sack, and I remember having to buy chocolate milk instead of white because it was one cent cheaper.

It is difficult to describe in short the enthusiasm and devotion provoked by and given to my research. We lived almost in poverty. I used pencils, two for a nickel, and could not buy a fountain pen, when I lost mine.

I traveled with my mother, Lela, and there was never enough money. I always had to roll down my silk stockings and carry a doll when we bought train tickets so I could go half-fare. If we had $3, we always figured how to tip for the trunks and still eat.

My parents scrimped and saved all their lives, to the point where my mother used a disgusting old oven mitt that was stained and partly patched together with a skirt I made in seventh grade.

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

When I was studying at the Neighborhood Playhouse, I would overdraft my bank account and not have enough money to buy groceries. But I also discovered how to cook with very limited resources.

My mother and father were lovely parents, always quite hard up, but very hard-working.

I've always sworn that not having enough money has saved me from mediocrity.

My father died when I was two years old. But my mother was quite capable. She raised three children with his war pension which was peanuts. Yet we did not want for anything. We grew up with a certain parsimony, which is a nice thing. Then if life gives you more good, otherwise you get used to. I'm still thrifty.

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.

We lived in just a studio apartment with just a room and a bed that came out of the wall, and my mom couldn't afford even a Happy Meal. We ate Top Ramen. I had no toys, and I had, like, two shirts, a pair of jeans, and that was it. But I had my mom to myself, and I remember it being the coolest period of time. I loved it. I really loved it.

I once used a fork to comb my hair because there was a time when I didn't own a hairbrush.

We were below welfare. We begged from people on welfare. My father tried to repair our shoes with pieces of bicycle tires.

When you're poor, an egg sandwich is dinner and you cut your potatoes with a butter knife.

When I was a lone soldier I didn't have a penny with me. Everybody was eating hummus with tehina and ate falafel, and I couldn't buy it. I was a little hungry, but I managed.

I've always been the person to look at any turmoil as temporary. I recall times where my mom was working five and six jobs, and there's still no food in the house.

I eventually turned the fridge and freezer off - they were empty anyway - and the boiler, desperate to save money, shocking myself awake in the morning with the shortest, coldest showers, and boiling a kettle of water twice a week to bath my young son.

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

When I was younger, my mom and I lived in a car because we didn't have anywhere to go.

My mom is a beautiful, amazing woman. We didn't have a ton of money growing up, and even, at one point, we were living on food stamps. But my mom still managed to make sure we ate healthy and were always fed nutritious meals!

I grew up with very little. I remember vividly using buckets of water to shower.

I grew up in a household where my mom made $16,000 a year. I know the struggle. I know how to keep those things in perspective, and I do keep it into perspective.