Rodney Dangerfield Quotes

I was so poor growing up...if I wasn't a boy...I'd have nothing to play with.

I was just a regular kid in poverty, struggling.

I grew up in Burbank - but not the Burbank of valet parking and TV studios. In the late 1950s, there was a small apartment complex on Elmwood Avenue that rented mostly to families on welfare. I lived there from age 3 to 11 and again from 14 to 18 with my mother, Shirley, and my younger sister, Toni.

When I was growing up, my family was so poor we couldn't afford to pay attention.

I was an only child. We were so poor, my parents and I had the same room.

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.

I can't dismiss my roots as a kid growing up during the Great Depression in the ordinary midwestern town of Grand Rapids, Michigan. From the standpoint of money and material possessions, we were barely scraping by.

Growing up, we really didn't have a lot of money.

Toys are not a need people typically think of, but they've got all these kids who have absolutely nothing to do.

I grew up in the South Bronx, raised by my grandmother, who scrapped and scraped to make sure I had a roof over my head and food in my stomach. I was painfully aware of what it was like to live with limited resources and a certain level of uncertainty.

I was very poor when I was young.

My father made about $25 a week. We always lived just on the edge.

I grew up in a very large, poor family.

When you're poor, an egg sandwich is dinner and you cut your potatoes with a butter knife.

I was 100 percent tomboy. I had the biggest Big Wheels.

Like David Copperfield, I was born amidst poverty and grew up in poverty. I did not own shoes. I did not bathe in water from a tap. I did no know about forks and spoons.

I grew up poor in San Pedro, California, sleeping on the floor of shady motels with my five siblings and not always sure when or where I'd get my next meal.

There were times when I couldn't even buy a loaf of bread.

I grew up on Section 8 housing, food stamps, welfare, and dealing with social services. I never had a Christmas. I never had a birthday.

Those heartaches, those cries in your life that you go through, I thought that every kid goes through them. I knew I didn't have much, but I didn't know there was another side out there. I thought one present for Christmas was the way it is.

I came from a background where we didn't have bread. I know what it's like to live with money and no money.

I never got to play as a child. All my spare time was spent working on my family's smallholding.

I started out playing football in the streets, playing barefoot like all the boys there - we didn't have the money for football boots.

I grew up as a boy with aggression.

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