Disadvantaged Upbringing Quotes

I wasn't born to a wealthy or powerful family - mother from Puerto Rico, dad from the South Bronx.

I'm entirely uneducated. I went to public school - public in the American sense - a blue-collar, working-class school. I never got a scholarship, I left when I was 15, never did any exams.

I didn't have the easiest time growing up; it's no secret. We were just poor.

When I was a child, I was living in the housing projects of Philadelphia. I didn't even have a Christmas tree.

My children didn't have my advantages; I was born into abject poverty.

We had poverty in our house. Even on the council estate I knew I was one of the poorer kids. I used to go round my friends houses on a Sunday to get their Sunday dinner because my mum couldn't cook either so I used to love going round my mates and say: 'Can you ask your Mum if I can come in for Sunday dinner?'

I was born dirt-poor with barely a stitch on my back, and no name or prestige attached to me, and no real clout or connections.

I come from an extremely modest background. So now I have way more than what I'm used to.

I was born in very sorry circumstances. Both of my parents were very sorry.

My mum came from nothing and didn't have many opportunities in her youth, and she blames a lot of her social inadequacies on that.

Me, coming from a low-income background, I really didn't take my studies serious as a young kid.

Those heartaches, those cries in your life that you go through, I thought that every kid goes through them. I knew I didn't have much, but I didn't know there was another side out there. I thought one present for Christmas was the way it is.

I grew up poor.

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

I'm not exceptional. I didn't grow up with privilege.

I come from a family of eight on public assistance, my parents were separated. My mother struggled, my father struggled.

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.

My dad grew up with straight-up no running water. He slept in a twin bed with his two sisters and his mom, like 'Charlie And The Chocolate Factory' style: like, feet at the head, feet at the head alternating. And then I think his dad slept on, like, a bed of newspapers on a floor in their apartment.

I come from the slums; I come from a hard background; I come from a poor family; and I was a soldier.

My father emigrated from Poland and my mother from Romania. There was no affluence in my family.

I was an industry kid but was never brought up like one.

People who end up in our prisons tend to come from the most difficult backgrounds. They did not have the parental support as they grew up, as many of us enjoyed, and they struggle when they leave prison.

I have never seen a picture of my mother. My mother's family never owned a photograph of her, which tells you everything you need to know about where I'm from and what the world was like for the people who gave me life.

I had little or no opportunity when I started out in life.