Chi Chi Rodriguez Quotes

My dad was a terrible father. Dreadful. But he had a very difficult childhood. He was fostered - he never knew who his father was. So he had a very different attitude to family and kids. I don't have any issues. I'm not suffering some secret angst.

My childhood was marked by a tension between privilege on the one hand and emotional dysfunction on the other.

I was the second of six kids. I wouldn't say we were poor; we had no money. That's different.

I grew up poor.

I grew up very poor in rural Alabama.

I don't think that much about my relationship with my mother and what it did to me. I sometimes feel terrible regret about her, what her life must have been like. Often, when I'm enjoying something, I think of how meager her rewards were and how much courage, in a way, she needed to go on living.

My look and my character come from my experiences as a child. I wasn't allowed to have girl toys, and I grew up poor. I also had a rough relationship with my stepdad.

I was the poorest kid in my school, poorest kid in my town, poorest family. That stayed with me forever.

I have six children, and we neglect our older ones more. Because we were so busy trying to make a living, we just say hello and goodbye... I'm sure those things stick with you.

I love my mum and dad, but they were shocking providers and carers.

I probably gave up on my dad when I was born.

I suspect I wasn't loved enough as a child.

We had to grow up very fast. There never was a day when there wasn't shouting about the bills.

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.

Growing up, we never really had money. If I wanted to get something, I had to go out and get a job.

I never got hugged as child.

Growing up without love, without being cared for, might be the worst type of poverty.

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.

The children in 'Nobody Knows' had a resonance with me. The children are projections of myself.

I love my son, but I was never there for him, so I understand why he hates me.

I was traumatized by a lot of childhood stuff. I felt that I was bad somewhere, starting with my birth.

Growing up low income and poor, I didn't have the best relationship with money.

Money and success haven't really changed my beliefs or opinions over the years. When I was growing up, my mum and dad split when I was 13 or 14, during the early-Nineties recession. At that time, my dad went bankrupt, and it played a huge part in it all at home.

For a good part of my childhood, we were super poor and lived in government housing. I don't characterize the American dream as being successful and having a lot of material wealth to show for it. I did fine without it for a really long time.

I was angry because I see other kids with things that I wanted: they had good parents, they had clothes, they always had food and extra money, and I wasn't one of those kids.