Street Survival Quotes

I've always belonged to the street, and I always will. It's in my DNA.

My folks kicked me out of the crib, so I was homeless, living out the whip.

I feel like I'm married to what I do, to the streets. And I feel like when the streets are mad, it's serious.

There's hardly any precedent for a guy like me to have the career that I've had. Because I grew up the way I grew up, I'm an in-your-face kind of guy. I developed that as a defense mechanism to survive in the streets. I do that in Hollywood in the service of my passion.

As gang members, as young dudes in the streets, especially in L.A., we're the effect of a situation. We didn't wake up and create our own mindstate and our environment; we adapted our survival instincts.

What you learned on the streets of Brooklyn will be a damn sight more helpful to your president than anything you learned at Harvard.

I learned to deal with the police... to be tough... to survive.

What's the safest thing to be when one is met by a gang of social outcasts in an alley? ...No, another social outcast!

In 1977, hip-hop literally wasn't outside the boroughs. But I was profoundly aware of the city through films like Saturday Night Fever, The French Connection, and Network. I had a friend who visited New York, and I asked him what it was like. He said, "Oh, it's great. Just wear a coat and don't look anyone in the eye."

Besides being a slum kid with no great education in anything except how to fight and stay alive and steal, I also had this temper.

At 19, I was in the streets making money. I was surviving.

I was able to do The Saint of Fort Washington, on the relationship between two homeless men.

My sister ran away for four years; she was living on the streets. I didn't know where she was, and then I was getting in trouble.

I was 14, and I left on my own. Living in a subway train, and police used to come in with a nightstick and say, 'You can't sleep here.' I'd get up and go across the street, get on another train, and go back the other way.

The way I lived, I grew up in a time where people would take your shoes, they'll take your jacket, they'll take your cheese without a gun. So people would jump on you - this was like fourteen, fifteen years old. So it always taught me that you gotta have your crew, in some ways you gotta move, don't put your self in harm's way, and definitely if you're a street dude and want any kind off credibility, don't put yourself under the mercy of anybody else, or you'll be at their mercy; they can do what they want to do to you.

I can't live a normal life, I was raised by the streets.

There's really no age limit when you out there in those streets.

The best money I made was panhandling.

Kids have to be tough to survive on the streets of Kathmandu, where older gang members often beat and rob them. They face cold winters, hunger, homelessness, and unsympathetic police. But under each hardened shell there is still a child.

I felt like I was homeless anyway, so the change in environment wasn't that much of a big deal. I felt pretty much the same. After six months of living on the streets [in Camden], I started singing, busking.

The streets helps you a lot in music, cause it let's you know that you can't trust nobody and that nobody's gonna wait for you. You can't just sit there with dope in your pocket and think that people are gonna come to you. You gotta put the product out there.

The streets would have chewed me up and spit me out and I knew that, but I found my own ways and different knacks for getting in trouble and being reckless with my life. And I've overcome a lot of personal demons and to be alive is really my greatest achievement.

Nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street.

From 16 to 21 when I was self sufficient and working in factories. I packed batteries, boxes, and make-up with heroin addicts. I have to thank my mum for kicking me out at 16 and making me stand on my own two feet.

I always wanted to experience the street life because my teenage life in Aberdeen was so boring. But I was never really independent enough to do it. I applied for food stamps, lived under the bridge, and built a fort at the cedar mill.