Neil Robertson Quotes

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

We were so poor. Every item of clothing came from a thrift store.

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

We called ourselves '2 Too Many' because we only had enough money for one of us.

I grew up in Plaza East public housing in the Western Addition, five of us living on $900 per month. 'Recycling' meant drinking out of old mayonnaise jars.

I was eating beans by candle light for a decade.

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

I used to live off of nothing.

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

I used to scrimp with Judy in one-room apartments.

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.

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 lived by the candlelight for two years because I couldn't afford power. It was nice and romantic at the time, but if you can't afford power you're pretty broke. You endure it.

Growing up in a lower-income family, you don't have the resources to make ends meet and you have to find creative ways to get by.

I remember that at the beginning of the month, the kind of menus my mom and father would prepare for us would have fish, chicken. But at the end of the month - because my father would be waiting for paycheck - the refrigerator would get empty. I remember that without a lot of food left, some of the best meals happened right there.

You think in a different way when you don't have any money. The joy of poverty is that you use your imagination to come up with stuff.

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.

I can't dismiss my roots as a kid growing up during the Great Depression in the ordinary midwestern town of Grand Rapids, Michigan. From the standpoint of money and material possessions, we were barely scraping by.

I am from a poor background in Portugal. We were medium-down, not down-and-out. My parents felt problems around food in the past but they made sure I did not miss anything. But there was nothing extra, no luxuries.

When we first were working, we had no money. We were all sharing this ghastly flat and we had nothing.

We were an underprivileged family. My parents were both tailors. We got by. But we only had a few important things in our life.

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.

I came from a background where we didn't have bread. I know what it's like to live with money and no money.

We were poor and lived modestly, but we always had food on the table.

Mum obviously did not earn much money to feed me and my siblings. She worked hard to raise us, but there was always something missing.