Anna Howard Shaw Quotes

My mom had to be resourceful. She grew up dirt poor in rural Louisiana.

My father died when I was two years old. But my mother was quite capable. She raised three children with his war pension which was peanuts. Yet we did not want for anything. We grew up with a certain parsimony, which is a nice thing. Then if life gives you more good, otherwise you get used to. I'm still thrifty.

I was happy, I wasn't beaten, and I lacked nothing. But it wasn't what people expect - it was very much sort of pinching and scraping. I don't know how my mother did it.

For some reason I am one of those people who act like they were born and raised during the Depression.

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

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.

We had no electricity, no gas. Food was probably our greatest entertainment - the most fun thing that we could do was food.

There were nine children in my father's family and eight in my mother's. My grandparents did the best with what they had. After the Depression, they were scratching out a living and working hard. They kept the family going.

We didn't really feel poor. You don't know that as a kid, but we really didn't have any cash. When machinery broke down, we didn't have money for parts, so we did our best to fix it.

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.'

As a child, I was always interested in building things. Instead of buying candy, I would purchase nails, which I used to construct things out of scrap wood. My mother always claimed that my spending my money on nails instead of on candy was why I was so skinny as a kid.

People might have the impression I had an easy life, but it's been anything but that.

I grew up learning to do more with less.

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'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit, and after they've gone, I'll get along. I started off living on gruel, and by God, I can always go back to it again.

We didn't have a lot when I was growing up, and it's the best thing that happened to me because I appreciate everything. I developed a strong work ethic, and I don't take anything for granted.

He who knows how to be poor knows everything.

Life isn't a tiptoe through the tulips.

The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.

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.

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.

I was born during the war and grew up in a time of rationing. We didn't have anything. It's influenced the way I look at the world.

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

No cracked earth, no blistering sun, no burning wind, no grasshoppers, are a permanent match for the indomitable American farmers and stockmen and their wives and children who have carried on through desperate days, and inspire us with their self-reliance, their tenacity and their courage. It was their fathers' task to make homes; it is their task to keep those homes; it is our task to help them with their fight.