Jay Kay Quotes

There's danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, 'My life is a little harder than it used to be.' At a certain place you've got to say to the people, 'Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope.'

I don't want to be coddled.

I always knew that I would have to make it on my own somehow.

I have to thank my mum for kicking me out at 16 and making me stand on my own two feet - that's how I got here.

As far as I was concerned, the Depression was an ill wind that blew some good. If it hadn't occurred, my parents would have given me my college education. As it was, I had to scrabble for it.

I had to fend for myself from the time I was 17 years old. I was a high-school dropout. I wasn't quite living on the streets, but I didn't have a lot of hope.

After school, I'd wait for someone to pick me up and no one would, so I'd be like, 'I guess I'll walk home.' I had to be a hustler, because nobody did anything for me.

I have grown up alone. I've taken care of myself. I worked, earned money and was independent at 18.

I was homeless for about 8 months, I refused to live with my dad or anyone for that matter. So I stayed somewhere that had no hot water, ever, no heat, I told myself I have to be strong and get through it on my own.

They had been brought up in the School of Hard Knocks.

There's something quite satisfying, quite reassuring about seeing a man having to survive.

Some experiences can give you a chip on your shoulder, but they also teach you the value of independence and looking out for yourself.

After my father died, we faced hardship but never asked anybody for help. We were self-sufficient.

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

I had to learn to toughen up and fend for myself. You'd think when you have a lot of brothers and sisters, they'd come to your aid and rescue you a lot of times, but for us it wasn't really like that. It was tough love.

It definitely toughens you up. It makes you mature from a young age, living away from home.

The worst lesson that can be taught to a man is to rely upon others and to whine over his sufferings

It was lonely on the hill, and cold. And all you could do was keep going. You could scream, cry, and stamp your feet, but apart from making you feel warmer, it wouldn’t do any good. You could say it was unfair, and that was true, but the universe didn’t care because it didn’t know what “fair” meant. That was the big problem about being a witch. It was up to you. It was always up to you.

That's the thing I'm learning about being thrown out on yer own. Nobody does nothing for you. If you don't change it, it don't get changed.

By no amount of agile exercising of a wistful imagination could my mother have been called lenient. Generous she was; indulgent never. Kind, yes, permissive, never. In her world, people she accepted paddled their own canoes, pulled their own weight, put their own shoulders to their own plows and pushed like hell.

There are times when it will go so wrong that you will barely be alive, and times when you realise that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms.

Self-reliance is the best defence against the pressures of the moment.

The greatest thing my dad taught me came from when I called him from a phone booth and said, 'Hungry. No bus token. Please. Out of options.' He said, 'Pfft, get a job.

I'm very involved with learning to be self-sufficient.

Forcing me to figure out how to provide for myself was probably one of the best things my parents ever did for me.