Tones and I Quotes

I own nothing; I just stay with friends all over the country.

I was born in 1946, so I was born on the tail end of when everything was deemed important. You made things to last. If you came from a poor family, there was only one can opener.

My wife, Sharon, and I started with nothing when we got married. I was driving a 1902 Pinto and eating off a card table.

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.

I had no money. I just figured out hustles to get by, like maybe selling my clothes. I wanted to travel around and be broke and live in sketchy apartments.

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.

Go far - too far you cannot, still the farther. The more experience finds you: and go sparing. One meal a week will serve you, and one suit, through all your travels; for you'll find it certain.

Tramping is too easy with all this money. My days were more exciting when I was penniless and had to forage around for my next meal... I've decided that I'm going to live this life for some time to come. The freedom and simple beauty of it is just too good to pass up.

We used to get one room and we'd park the vehicle outside, everybody would all take showers and we'd steal towels because we knew we wasn't gonna have enough towels for all five of us to shower.

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.

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.

For some reason I am one of those people who act like they were born and raised during the Depression.

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.

The beggar wears all colors fearing none.

I grew up in a family where our mother made our clothing. We didn't have a lot of money, so we learned how to scrimp, and we learned how to invent and to create. And those are learned skills.

Since I was younger I've been making the best out of nothing.

It's not hard to tell we was poor - when you saw the toilet paper dryin' on the clothesline.

My mother did literally hitchhike barefoot to the country store.

My number-one theory in life is that style is proportional to your lack of resources - the less you have, the more stylish you're likely to be.

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.

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 started out with nothing. I still have most of it.

We were never a family that had a lot. We had enough, but not a lot.

I had done a fair bit of traveling during the holidays in my school days with my guitar and discovered that I could live on it. Admittedly, I traveled with a sleeping bag but I could always find somewhere to lay my head.