Bill Cosby Quotes

I grew up in the projects in Queens, and we were really poor.

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?

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.

My father was an urchin that lived in Hell's Kitchen. He was part of a family of nine. I mean, there were times that were better and worse, but mostly, by the time we got to L.A., they'd lost whatever they had. And it was a sad time. And both he and I became truck drivers for different companies.

When I was young, poverty was so common that it didn’t have a name.

I grew up in a low-income family. I was raised by a single mother.

I grew up on Section 8 housing, food stamps, welfare, and dealing with social services. I never had a Christmas. I never had a birthday.

If our family was poor, of what did our poverty consist? If our clothes were torn the torn places only let in the sun and wind. In the winter we had no overcoats, but that only meant we ran rather than loitered.

We were so poor my daddy unplugged the clocks when we went to bed.

I grew up on the south side of Chicago, most of that time on welfare. My mother and sister and I used to live with my grandparents and various cousins. We shared a two-bedroom tenement, and the three of us slept in one of those bedrooms and had a set of bunk beds.

When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money.

When poverty shows itself, even mischievous boys understand what it means.

When I was growing up, my family was so poor we couldn't afford to pay attention.

Being someone who had had a very difficult childhood, a very difficult adolescence - it had to do with not quite poverty, but close. It had to do with being brought up in a family where no one spoke English, no one could read or write English. It had to do with death and disease and lots of other things. I was a little prone to depression.

I know what it's like not to have food in the fridge or money to buy more.

I can remember living in the housing projects and being broke like it was yesterday.

When I was little, we lived on 8 acres and my mom had a horse. But when I was 7, my mom kicked my dad out, and then in order to feed us five kids, she got critters cheap or for free and raised them for food. We milked a cow, raised chickens, pigs and beef cattle. We heated our one-story house with wood and stayed cold all winter.

My father died when I was young, and after he did, my mother had it tough. Very tough.

My family in general - they're troubled or poorer people.

It's really hard to be poor in New York - I was really poor when I lived in New York.

I grew up poor.

Basically, I was a kid growing up with a single mother in Brooklyn.

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

Poverty is not a disgrace, but it's terribly inconvenient.

When I was about 8 or 9, I lived in New Jersey with my mother and we were seven deep in one bedroom and sometimes we didn't have electricity.