You don't have to be impoverished to understand poverty.
If poverty were a man, I would have slain him.
There are people much less fortunate than us, and I don't mean people hungry sleeping in the streets either.
I'd been in Sacramento a day and already noticed the pervasiveness of its homeless problem. The city seemed like California without the masks or pretense: a place where dreams were occasionally made but mostly torn apart.
I know what it means to go to the stream to fetch water... what it means when people are poor and don't have enough to eat. It's not enough to say you know about poverty. You have to live it.
I was shocked when I came to New Orleans. I never knew there were beggars on the streets here. I didn't know that there were poor people. I thought this was Heaven, you know?
A lot of unemployed families were moved to Hastings, and places were built for them. They're communities of unemployed people. It's been difficult dealing with that.
Poverty is ever an inbred growth
The poor are little folks living on little lands who want what we already have.
It's difficult to write about poverty in a way that doesn't feel cliched.
Spanish Harlem is like every ghetto in America. There's every distraction possible. To make it up out of there is really a task itself.
My formative years would be in South Central Los Angeles. It was a really volatile environment, but, I always say, when you're living in the hood, you don't live this life where you're crying every day, downtrodden every day.
I'm from a rough place: the Bronx.
I didn't come from the elites. I didn't come from the Northeast or from San Francisco. I came from a southern Ohio steel town, and it's a town that's really struggling in a lot of ways, ways that are indicative of the broader struggles of America's working class.
I'm from the housing projects, where people can't afford $150 shoes.
I think one of the most important American films is 'Jackie Brown,' which is such a humble depiction of humble characters but so powerful. The film was pure depiction of the American poverty of the '90s.
Today, we are closer to fulfilling America's promise of economic and social justice because we stand on the shoulders of giants like Dr. King, yet our future progress will depend on how we prepare our next generation of leaders. We must fortify their ladders of opportunity by correcting social injustice, breaking the cycle of poverty in struggling communities, and reinvesting in our schools. Education can unlock a child's potential and remains our strongest weapon against injustice and inequality.
There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.
I work a lot in the slums of Tondo, Manila, and the life there is poor and very sad. And I've always taught to myself to look for the beauty of it and look in the beauty of the faces of the children and to be grateful.
The Republicans do not have feeling for people who are in bad shape.
I come from North New Jersey, where nothing's promised.
I've grown up with girls that are like Precious. I've grown up with people that are like everyone that I read about in that book. And so years later, when I was given the role, I just felt a huge responsibility to show the reality of that situation and to show that we're not making it up.
I mean, when you grow up in the inner city and you grow up in a single-parent household, that's - those are humbling times, you know?
I grew up in a council house in a poor Scottish town. I came of age during the recession of the mid-1980s when unemployment in my area reached 40 per cent.
Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.
