Joe Morton Quotes

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

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.

I pluck with my fingernails. If I break a nail, I can't cancel a concert. So I can make a nail out of a ping-pong ball.

I moved to New York and couldn't get a job as an actor. And waited tables for so long.

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

The struggle to have a living wage doesn't come easy. You're ready to work, you want it, you seek it... but it's not like it's just given to you.

I know what it's like to have to put back food at the checkout line because you don't have enough money and those kinds of things.

I grew up in poverty and my mother had to sacrifice a lot for us to eat and get an education - just imagine in a house where we were more than six children! But hard work and dedication is what it took for me to be here today.

I know what it's like to be a teenager in Orange County. I know what it's like to be a kid in L.A. I know what it's like to not have any money and have your lights turned off. I know what it's like to live in a house with five rooms.

New York reminds me of what my career was like when I lived here, so when I walk through the streets, I remember when I had ten bucks in my pocket and all I could eat is Chipotle.

My dad was a civil servant before he retired, and my mum worked, too. We could not always get three meals in a day; sometimes we'd struggle.

A lot of times I went to sleep hungry, and not because I was cutting weight for a fight.

I've lived in poverty.

My mother really struggled when we were young. She was on food stamps and welfare. Looking back, I know we didn't have a lot, but I never felt I was at a loss for anything.

I was poor my whole life.

Being an immigrant mother can be hard, but being a poor immigrant mother is much harder. You don't generally get to sit in cafes polishing your French by reading 'Le Monde.'

Growing up in a very poor orphanage in Ukraine, there wasn't much food.

I've always had big dreams and very little means.

Mum obviously did not earn much money to feed me and my siblings. She worked hard to raise us, but there was always something missing.

I grew up in Plaza East public housing in the Western Addition, five of us living on $900 per month. 'Recycling' meant drinking out of old mayonnaise jars.

Being a hungry artist, you don't have the luxury of buying whatever you want. There were years of me doing a lot of odd jobs, this and that just to make ends meet.

My parents used to struggle to put food on our plates. Whatever little money they got, we had to make do with it.

I've been poor most of my life.

In late 2004, I left my much-maligned home state of New Jersey for the supposedly greener pastures of Astoria, Queens. I'd finally be in the mix, living off the subway line, able to go from audition to audition during the day and from late night show to late night show in the wee hours of the morning.

Moving to Mumbai was difficult, as survival was a major concern. I was not from a very well-to-do family.