Robert H. Grubbs Quotes

When I was four or five years old, my grandfather showed me how to build things, paint, saw. Through years of fixing bikes, repairing lawn mowers, I learned how things work.

I grew up in a family where our mother made our clothing. We didn't have a lot of money, so we learned how to scrimp, and we learned how to invent and to create. And those are learned skills.

When you start with next to nothing, all you've got is a lot of thought, a lot of innovation, figuring new ways to do things without using a lot of money.

We had grain but no mills, so I designed a special mill of wood so we could make flour.

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

I can make just such ones if I had tools, and I could make tools if I had tools to make them with.

We didn't have money for toys, so I made my own.

Building and tinkering were such a huge part of our childhood, whether we were trying to entertain ourselves as kids, helping our parents out on the ranch, or getting creative with school projects.

As a kid I did enjoy building things; learned quickly how to make gun powder. I built sleighs, forts, houses in the back yards of houses.

The best substitute for money is ingenuity.

Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and amusing than much money without ingenuity.

My mother could make something out of nothing - and everything started from scratch.

Life is composed of different inventions. I have continued to work at different things and rebuilt my home all by myself. I did it for the sake of satisfaction at doing something.

I often think I am a better person because I lived for many years of my life with a flashlight. I have developed skills I did not think were possible - bathing with a cup of water by candlelight, for instance, and writing a story with a headlamp on.

You know how people love to glamorize poverty? There's nothing glamorous about it. But it did make me really creative. Those days, I was literally taking t-shirts in the day and sewing them back together to make dresses for the night.

I usually just dress myself. I typically make something or buy something and fix it up. I really like to spend my money on accessories like bags, shoes, belts. I don't really spend on things I can make.

We are a very crafty family.

Low budgets force you to be more creative. Sometimes, with too much money, time and equipment, you can over-think. My way, you can use your gut instinct.

When I designed my first house in L.A., I didn't have any money - I did it all on my own. I liked that.

If I need something, I'll invent it.

Imagination and invention go hand in hand. Remember how lack of resources was never a problem in childhood games? Shift a few pieces of furniture around the living room, and you have yourself a fort.

When you're making an independent film what you don't have in time and money you have to make up with creativity and diligence.

You can do great things with low-tech stuff.

Unless you're living on the street and surviving on a diet of discarded turkey drumsticks, there's no point in being gloomy. We've spent too long trying to cheer ourselves up by spending money on brightly coloured things we don't really need. We've stopped using our imaginations.

Everything from the little house was in the wagon, except the beds and tables and chairs. They did not need to take these, because Pa could always make new ones.