Karin Fossum Quotes

I had to steal to survive.

If my children were hungry I should think I would steal to feed them.

Hunger makes a thief of any man.

I was mischievous. I wasn't bad. I stole food so we could eat. My mother didn't know. I used to tell her some man gave me $10 to sweep out the yard. I was like Robin Hood. I took from the rich and gave to the poor. Me.

Some people were breaking in to get food for their families. They were in survivor mode. Don’t confuse that with a guy carting off a 64 inch television set and looting…. The test is take the mirror and put it in front of your face and ask what would you do.

A person who steals bread during a famine is not treated as a thief.

Hunger is the teacher of many.

If I had been brilliant or a genius, I wouldn't have needed to break the law just to survive.

I came back to the hood and got in those streets and started doing whatever it took for me to provide.

I know exactly what it's like to not have a penny. I know exactly what it's like trying to get a job. I know exactly what it's like having bloody one tin of Ambrosia left in the cupboard. But I know I can survive.

Anyway, I lived on the streets and did pretty good until I got caught stealing, what was it? I kicked in a restaurant window, went in and took all the food that I wanted, and while coming out I was grabbed.

The usual complaint is, 'I have no other way of earning a living.' The harsh reply can be, 'Do you have to live?'

It's frightening to think about more sanctions. When I've met North Koreans in China, they've said to me, 'You have no idea how difficult our lives are. We live like dogs.' They wake up in the morning wondering what they're going to eat for dinner.

Things were so bad we ate rabbits that neighbours had run over and gave to us because they knew we were broke.

There was a point when I almost gave up. I couldn't feed myself. I couldn't feed my pets.

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!

Being a hooker does not mean being evil. The same with a pick-pocket, or even a thief. You do what you do out of necessity.

They went into stores to get food to stay alive. Looting isn't the right word. I call it survival.

I wrote a story about a man who is orphaned during the 1927 Mississippi River flood in Louisiana, and he's on the banks of levee, and he's starving. And there are other people starving, too. And he's so desperate, he's seven years old, that he finds a pig that's been abandoned. He kills it with a hammer, and he drags it back.

Ignorance, filth, and poverty are the missionaries of crime.

A starving man thinks first of satisfying his hunger before anything else. He will sell his liberty and all for the sake of getting a morsel of food.

It is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.

During recess at school, I'd slip back into the classroom and find something in some other kid's lunch bag that wouldn't be missed - a package of crackers, an apple - and I'd gulp it down so quickly I would barely be able to taste it.

My mother was one of seven girls whose parents went to bed hungry so their children wouldn't. My father lost his mother when he was nine. He left school and went to work for the next 70 years. They emigrated to America with little more than the hope of a better life.

I don't just live in a bubble in Los Angeles. I'm on the road all the time. I say hello to people everywhere. That way, you get to see what despair is around the holidays. People are making terrible choices: Do I have heat in the winter or food on the table? Decisions between filling the gas tank or buying a gift for a kid.