Wale Quotes

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.

I love going to the hair salon. I'm Spanish. I think it's more of a Latina thing to go to the hair salon.

Never be scared to cut your own hair, but take it easy and never go too far.

I have a massive head of hair: it's a Jew 'fro. It's living and kicking.

I used to turn in, like, 20 money orders to pay my rent - $20 for this one, $30 for this one. I didn't have a checking account.

There are far too many people who get up early in the morning, and work hard, who cannot make ends meet.

I didn't have money growing up.

I'm proud that I've never stopped writing about being poor.

I was like other teenagers in the late 1960s; I too was very interested in having an Afro and getting rid of the perm that was in my hair.

Where I'm from in South Carolina a lot of my friends, a lot of my family members have locks, what we call them. So, you know, it's more of a way of life, where we from, not a hairstyle. We really don't care to have it neat or you know too pretty it's just you know grow your hair. And I wash my hair everyday too.

I've been around low-income people all of my life. I mean, growing up, low income, the community where I've chosen to live, low-income.

I grew up pretty poor - not poor compared with people in India or Africa who are really poor, but poor enough so that the worry about money really cast a pall over your life a lot of the time.

My mom was on welfare for the first five, six years of my life.

I grew up in a household where my mom made $16,000 a year. I know the struggle. I know how to keep those things in perspective, and I do keep it into perspective.

My parents were very strapped for cash when we were growing up.

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

Poverty is not a lack of character. Poverty is a lack of cash.

I know what it's like to be on public assistance and to be unemployed. And I know what it's like to be evicted.

The side of town, the side of Louisiana that I grew up on, there's a lot of poverty.

All of my childhood, we were on welfare. My mom received Aid for Families with Dependent Children - welfare. Without that, we wouldn't have had subsidized housing. Most of my childhood, we had a two-bedroom apartment, but eventually we got into the projects, where we had four bedrooms. That was great.

I've been poor most of my life.

My brother's been cutting my hair since I was in 7th grade.

I was raised by a single mother. We were definitely below the median income of our area.

I may have been in financial difficulties, but I'm not a pauper.

I was brought up on a council estate. I know what it's like to be poor.