Barbara Demick Quotes

People who live in North Korea, they die for food, but living in the free world, the cat even eats expensive sushi.

Physical hunger and physical poverty is something I could only imagine. I've been poor when I was in China... As kids we never had to starve, but just didn't have enough meat, enough rice.

We take food for granted, but it isn't a luxury for many people.

Sometimes we used to eat once a day... chicken backs. You could buy four chicken backs for a quarter.

There is plenty of corn in Castile, but he who has none, starves.

We don't want a country populated by children feeding themselves from garbage dumps.

On my way back to Missouri I stopped in St Louis and I saw my first bread line – 200 starving men forming a gray line as they waited for food. The sight of them disturbed me.

If Victual should prove scarce, as we have not Goods or Money for any Value to send out for Corns [food grains like wheat]; so only a part of the People could be maintained: The better part would have Bread, but the more necessary part, the Laboring Men would be forced to leave the Country, or to starve in it.

Even if we could produce enough food globally to feed everyone satisfactorily, the continued steady rise in the cost of inputs will mean increasing numbers will not be able to afford the food we produce. This is a key point that is often missed.

With China’s 1.4 billion increasingly affluent consumers starting to compete with U. S. consumers for the U. S. grain harvest, cheap food seen by many as an American birthright, may be coming to an end.

I am one of the lucky North Koreans who made it out of China. North Korean defectors in the country are terrified of trying to leave because they are often caught at the borders as they attempt to cross into Mongolia or Laos.

We came from nothing really. One house. Ten people. Even days the lights was off. The worst days was not eating. Surviving off rice and toast.

A huge famine hit North Korea in the mid-1990s. Ultimately, more than a million North Koreans died during the famine, and many only survived by eating grass, bugs, and tree bark.

I was growing up in Hyesan, right by the closest North Korea-China border. China was just across the river: you could see across. So I was curious. On the river, on both sides, you have houses, then mountains. I wanted to know what was on the other side of the Chinese mountains.

I think it's possible that China is ready for a serious change regarding its North Korean defector policy. Chinese people are starting to realize that so many defectors have been suffering in China, and it doesn't have to be this way.

We hear time and again what a prosperous, affluent country Britain is, the sixth richest in the world. But aren't we ashamed that people who need emergency food handouts are eating cold beans and stewed steak from the tin, or handing it back, because they can't even heat it up?

The entire trendy foodie world - food writing, food television, celebrated restaurants - is all about food for the rich. But the most important food issue is how to feed the poor or the hardworking middle class.

Your problems pale in comparison with those of the millions of people in the world who do not have enough to eat.

Right now you're seeing more and more families reporting that they are skipping meals. They're having to give up meat. Mothers are foregoing food so their kids can have something. People are growing their own vegetables, not because they've gone organic, but because it's one of the few assured sources of food they have. For low-income Americans food is costly right now. The price of food has been going up, and wages haven't. This puts working Americans in a real bind. The fact that the mainstream media hasn't reported it doesn't mean that it's not happening.

It occurred to me that there wouldn't be world hunger, if you people would MOVE WHERE THE FOOD IS!!!

We cannot exist as a little island of well-being in a world where two-thirds of the people go to bed hungry every night.

poverty is obsolete and hunger is abolished

A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.

What freedom does a starving man have?" The answer is that starvation is a tragic human condition- perhaps more tragic than loss of freedom. That does not prevent these from being two different things.

Our great country is rich and abundant in so many ways. It is totally unacceptable to me that we have children and families going hungry!