In South Africa, to be poor and black was normal, to be poor and white was a tragedy.

yet we were infinitely poor. Wind, sand, and stars. The austerity of Trappists. But on this badly lighted cloth, a handful of men who possessed nothing in the world but their memories were sharing invisible riches.

Because we were a poor area, the school had a small budget and was unable to teach the second half of the alphabet.

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

My family was so poor we were close to eating the holes inside of doughnuts.

What a wretched thing it was to be born poor and not to have any one to do anything for you and not to be able to do so very much for yourself!

The sidewalks they passed were crowded. Most of the onlookers were black, and many were children whose eyes reflected unfulfillable dreams. The city's heart was dying before its carcass, and these were the poor, trapped in outworn clothes and rat-ridden tenements.

The poor have been doubly impoverished by the ugliness that surrounds them.

There are people so poor that the only thing they have is money.

He knew what poverty means. The chilling of brain and heart, the unnerving of the hands, the slow gathering about one of fear and shame and impotent wrath, the dread feeling of helplessness, of the world’s base indifference. Poverty! Poverty!

Money is a sign of poverty.

Winter came and the city [Chicago] turned monochrome — black trees against gray sky above white earth. Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds

If our family was poor, of what did our poverty consist? If our clothes were torn the torn places only let in the sun and wind. In the winter we had no overcoats, but that only meant that we ran rather than loitered. Those who are to follow the arts should have a training in what is called poverty.

Whites were bright as fresh-fallen snow, yellow shone like gold, reds turned to flame, but the shadows were so black they looked like holes in the world.