Precarity Quotes

I never had a month or so go by where I haven't had a job, but you always worry that someone will turn off the tap.

One who sits between two chairs may easily fall down.

In the interests of competitiveness in a globalizing world economy, governments of all complexions introduced labour-market reforms that promoted flexibility but accentuated the precariat's insecurities.

At the time me and X met, we weren't homeless, but we were basically homeless.

I hear the same anxieties over and over again. Everything is too fast; everything is too precarious. We have more access than ever to the people we are trying to reach, thanks to social media and mobile technology, and more information than we know what to do with.

Why is life so tragic; so like a little strip of pavement over an abyss. I look down; I feel giddy; I wonder how I am ever to walk to the end.

On what slender threads do life and fortune hang.

Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor

Life can be like walking on a high wire. Falling seems a tiny misstep away.

When I left home at sixteen I bought a small rug. It was my roll-up world. Whatever room, whatever temporary place I had, I unrolled the rug. It was a map of myself. Invisible to others, but held in the rug, were all the places I had stayed - for a few weeks, for a few months. On the first night anywhere new I liked to lie in bed and look at the rug to remind myself that I had what I needed even though what I had was so little. Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won’t help you.

Life is but a day; A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way From a tree's summit.

The fact that we define ourselves by our roles can be an admirable thing - it's how we build a life and make a living. But it's also precarious. Roles change. Sometimes overnight.

We have to live like people in a web of knives, we mustn't reach out our hands or we get them gashed.

Most of my life, I feel I have been Unicycling at the Edge of the Abyss! If fact, this will be the name of my book if I ever write one, or a one man stand up routine. I have used it as the name of a collection of my musical compositions written during the '90s. It fits the scary journey I feel I've been on.

Lately, the world felt fragile, like a blown egg, as if it might shatter beneath a careless touch.

You know when you're sitting on a chair and you lean back so you're just on two legs and you lean too far so you almost fall over but at the last second you catch yourself? I feel like that all the time.

Well, I don't have much job security.

Ownership is not a general feature of our society, determining its character. On the contrary, dependence on a precarious wage at the will of others is the general feature of our society.

I'm me, I live from film to mouth.

You know, I can't afford to take anything for granted.

My belief about acting in one foot on a banana peel and the other one in the grave.

Man always travels along precipices... His truest obligation is to keep his balance.

Mon cher ami, let's not give them any pretext, no matter how small, for judging us!!! Otherwise, we'll be left in shreds. We are forced to take the same precautions as the animal trainer. If, before going into the cage, he has the misfortune to cut himself while shaving, what a feast for the wild animals!!

No one really has any job security anymore, including myself.

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor and surviving.