Poverty Inspiration Quotes

Filipinos want beauty. I have to look beautiful so that the poor Filipinos will have a star to look at from their slums.

Poverty is the great reality. That is why the artist seeks it.

I am very much afraid that to the fiction writer the fact that we shall always have the poor with us is a source of satisfaction,for it means, essentially, that he will always be able to find someone like himself.

Grub Street turns out good things almost as often as Parnassus. For if a writer is hard up enough, if he’s far down enough (down where I have been and am rising from, I am really saying), he can’t afford self-doubt and he can’t let other people’s opinions, even a father’s, keep him from writing.

Most of the best music in American history was made by people with no options.

Well, life isn't a cakewalk, is it?! Eighty-nine percent of the world's most valuable art was created by men living in rat-infested flats. You think Velásquez wore Adidas? You think he enjoyed the luxuries of central heating and twenty-four-hour pizza delivery?!

I don't believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That's bullshit.

Being rich would be disastrous for me as a writer. I have always needed to write to pay the bills.

Only the poor can create art.