Hardship Experience Quotes

I came from the heart of the ghetto - there ain't no suburbia in me.

When I was 12, my mum put us in a summer camp meant for children from low-income families. It was in upstate New York where we had to live in tents, fetch water, cook our meals, and even dig our own toilet bowls.

Without suffering, there'd be no compassion.

I have come up the hard way.

Obviously, resilience matters. I was no stranger to adversity, but it's different when it's personal. Not something I would recommend.

I know what it feels like to hit financial turmoil, to be hit with the threat of losing your home. I kept working, I kept looking for resources to improve my situation.

I saw my parents come over. They were immigrants, they had no money. My dad wore the same pair of shoes, I had some ugly clothes growing up, and I never had any privileges. In some ways, I think the person that I am now, I think it's good that I had that kind of tough upbringing.

I've been at the bottom. I've lost loved ones, I've lost best friends, but that's part of life. I don't hide that.

I lived in a homeless shelter. That's what I mean when I say I've been in situations where people need help. I don't remember my exact age, but I remember there were two bunk beds and five of us in there: me, my three sisters and my mum.

We never considered Christmas a holiday because the budget was really tight, so Christmas was just a usual day for us.

Happiness is pure kitch; we come into the world to suffer and learn.

Listening to the type of music I grew up with, like King Sunny Ade, Fela Kuti and experiencing different things and conditions and hardship, as well as the good times in Nigeria, has definitely carved me into who I am.

There's no way I would have got to see so much of the world, with my humble background, without modelling. We were penniless and hungry for most of my youth. I washed the sheets in the bathtub in my bedroom and hung them out of the window on the clothes line, which in winter was difficult as the sheets would freeze and get stuck to the line.

Until I started doing standup, there were some very bleak days.

If you never know hardship, you can't really support people around you.

I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future.

No one gave me an opportunity, which I desperately needed in my struggling days. If there is one thing that I have learned during that period is that you need to create an opportunity yourself if you want to live your dream.

Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.

The roots of my music start from the ghetto.

I'm the guy who come through a lot of hard patches. I've seen a lot of hardships.

I lived for two years in an abandoned gas station with no running water and no electricity after my parents got divorced and my stepdad couldn't get a job. So I think a lot about families like mine who were middle class and struggled. So that experience really drives my philosophy.

It has pleased and interested me to see how I could get along under difficult circumstances and with so much discomfort but as I say I was not sent out here to improve my temper or my health or to make me more content with my good things in the East.

I come from a working class background, it wasn't easy for me at all, but I worked hard.