Marie Lu Quotes

My background's working class. My parents had to work to make ends meet. We don't come from any sense of privilege.

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.

The fight to make ends meet, keeps a man upon his feet.

I got tired and embarrassed by the constant poverty of those years. I told Doug [ Brinkley] this is really going to be a horrible downer of a book [The Proud Highway] if all it's going to be is about being broke. I didn't like being reminded of desperation at all times.

Poverty, first of all was never a misfortune for me; it was radiant with sunlight.. I owe it to my family, first of all, who lacked everything and who envied practically nothing.

That's the story of my life rich or poor and mostly poor and truly poor.

I know exactly what it's like to not have a penny. I know exactly what it's like trying to get a job. I know exactly what it's like having bloody one tin of Ambrosia left in the cupboard. But I know I can survive.

I would like to thank my parents in Vergaio, a little village in Italy. They gave me the biggest gift: poverty.

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

I was born on the other side of the tracks, in public housing in Brooklyn, New York. My dad never made more than $20,000 a year, and I grew up in a family that lost health insurance. So I was scarred at a young age with understanding what it was like to watch my parents lose access to the American dream.

Once you become poor, tired and time-constrained, you become a much better human being.

I didn't have any extra money. But I can't say that I had a hard early career.

You don't forget where you came from. I came from nothing. I was in Marseille in a bad area. We didn't have anything. We were rich in love.

I remember back in the days my Mom didn't have enough for Thanksgiving.

What's happened to society is we've become really pretentious. But there was a time in my life where I really had to choose between boiling potatoes and paying my gas bill, so I'd buy a can of potatoes.

I was born and raised during Depression Years when we were on County relief and we all went out and we hustled. we worked. I worked in a restaurant, I washed dishes.

I was poor once, I didn't like it, I don't want to be poor again.

In my youth, poverty enriched me, but now I can afford wealth.

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

I think being poor has been good for me. I saw how my mom and dad struggled, and how they could stretch a dollar farther than you could begin to imagine.

It's no secret that my family was very, very poor, and I don't want that for my life or my children's life certainly. But some might say I could relax a bit more and know that that's not going to happen to me. I'm not going to end up in a car.

My children didn't have my advantages; I was born into abject poverty.

Poverty is a lot like childbirth - you know it is going to hurt before it happens, but you'll never know how much until you experience it.

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.