Toyin Odutola Quotes

By the time I was seven, my mother and I had moved 13 times.

I was in, like, nine schools by ninth grade, so I moved a ton of times when I was younger.

I moved around 13 different times before I was in fifth grade, not having money, not having a lot of friends.

When I was 5, 6 - so you know, memories aren't that great - I remember coming home and I remember seeing all of our belongings on the street and a Salvation Army truck picking them up. We got taken to a shelter. And then we moved around a lot, finding places to stay.

Growing up as a kid, we moved all over the country on a fairly frequent basis, from New Jersey to Texas, California, Illinois... we moved 21 times in my first 17 years.

I had a very turbulent and painful childhood, like many people. I left for college when I was 16 years old and up until that point I'd lived in five different family configurations. Each one ended or changed through a death or some terrible loss.

I went to 13 schools in 12 years. We moved all over the place. Music was the only thing that I could get behind... I wasn't that good at socializing. I'm still not.

We moved 23 times before I was out of high school!

As a child I had dealt with a lot of loss and grief. I was constantly losing my parents, losing my home, constantly moving around, living with this stranger, that stepfather, or whatever.

Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die.

I was in a military family, so by the time I was 13 I'd lived in six different places.

So war is an extremely sad business, because the majority of people don't want to be in it.

The War will leave none of us as it found us.

When men talk about war, the stories and terminology vary - it's this battle, these weapons, this terrain. But no matter where you go in the world, women use the same language to speak of war. They speak of fire, they speak of death, and they speak of starvation.

Relative to most people I know, I am comfortable just about anywhere. I went to 20 schools before the 8th grade because my father couldn't hold a job. We moved every six months. I had to adjust.

I have been through two wars in my 24 years, and I know what it's like to be without anything, to see the bombs flying above your head.

There's nothing glamorous about war at all.

My family moved a lot as a kid. We started in Colorado, where I lived for five years. We moved to Chicago for two years, to San Francisco for one year, Connecticut for seven, Oregon for a couple years, and then I went to school.

War remains the decisive human failure.

I don't have any friends from my childhood because I didn't stay at one school for very long.

When I was 5, some financial things happened, and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment, sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say, 'Don't get comfortable, because we may not be here long.'

The war begins to make itself felt very near to us.

The misery in war-torn Afghanistan is reminiscent of images from the Thirty Years' War.

Beirut turned into a war zone in a matter of hours. We were stuck at home, the roads were blocked.

I lived just outside of L.A. for a long time. My dad was in the military, so I moved a lot.