Tituss Burgess Quotes

In a packed programme tonight, we will be talking to an out-of-work contortionist who says he can no longer make ends meet.

When you're 22, 23, living in New York, you're just scrambling to live on people's couches and in rooms that you're sure you're not supposed to be in. You're not on the lease; you're paying weird amounts of money every month trying to make it happen.

We paid off our debts, we learned some, made friends and returned in 1950 with a larger view of life. I had, however, no home, no income of any kind and no prospects whatsoever.

The couple of years before I was declared bankrupt were the roughest. The bank letters, the pressure, the stress was awful. You're in this twilight zone of not knowing where your life is going, and yet you're in Westlife. Everything was great with the band. I was earning money, and it looked good.

I came to New York with $500 and I had to live on that, but thankfully I was taken up by photographers quickly.

After graduation, I was floundering in L.A., doing stand-up comedy and working in a shoe store in the Valley.

I've never felt fully able to sustain myself because I've run out of money many, many times, and it's been scary.

I think that so many people don't understand how easy it is to be broke, how easy it is to find yourself in a situation where you're in an absolutely foreign place.

At my lowest I was making nothing, of course.

In my house, it is always a scramble from paycheck to paycheck.

I know what it's like to be shoveling to pay bills. I know what it's like to not have a job.

For me, my 20s were all about reaching for the brass ring of work in theater, television, and film, surviving in between by waiting tables, painting houses, serving coffee, and temping.

I live like most of the people in my district: paycheck to paycheck.

I'm very, very fortunate to be in the job that I'm in, and I would love for it to continue forever, but it won't. I have to financially and emotionally prepare for the day that 'Mad Men' will go away, because who knows what my next job is going to be?

There's a foot race between gas bills and paychecks.

Poor Darrell Hammond. What's he going to do when I leave office?

I was 20 years old. My entire possessions consisted of $5 and a sewing machine.

… there are a great many people who not only can make no budget but can barely manage to exist with their families on what they earn from day to day

Since the working-class lives from hand to mouth, it buys as long as it has the means to buy.

For a year after I left Cambridge, I had an agent, and I was working in a pub and doing waitering. But I could stay at home rent-free.

We come from a very humble background. A lot of my paycheck from 'Skins' went to paying the bills and getting us a new sofa.

When you haven't got a job, a joke is about the only thing that's free.

I was adrift for a while. I worked as a substitute teacher; I sold cars.

I was so nervous when I moved out at 18. I had a couple thousand dollars to my name. I remember it was all trial and error for me. I had to figure it all out on my own.

I was broke from 19 to 26, borrowing money from my parents or my brothers or sisters every week to pay the bills.