Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Stephanie Land - Page 2

I go through phases where all I want to eat are mashed potato patties with fried eggs, or pasta with meat sauce.

Our main purpose of writing is so we don't feel alone and that others don't feel alone.

I have what's known as a 'spirited' child. Mia has run me ragged since she knew how to walk. She'd run across soccer fields as a toddler, never once looking back. I have learned how to navigate her strong nature while nurturing it as well. I raised her to think for herself. I raised her to question.

Since Mia, my eldest, was born, we've been through the gamut of shelters, transitional housing and even living in a camper in a driveway.

Shortly after my first daughter was born in 2007, we had to move into a homeless shelter.

As a single mother, I qualified for Pell Grants, and received a scholarship from a small organization for domestic violence survivors.

Cleaning companies often pay their employees less than a living wage and offer no sick days or health insurance. My years of working for them still made me grimace every time I saw a little yellow car with 'Merry Maids' written on the side.

I think people are fed up with struggling to make ends meet. It's so easy to find yourself in a position of not being able to pay the bills for most Americans when we're watching the cost of housing and child care and health insurance skyrocket without an increase in wage.

There's a thing called a 'welfare cliff,' and what happens is you get up to a threshold - which is a very firm line - and if you jump over it, then you lose all of your benefits.

As a parent you know you want to provide safe, healthy environments for your children.

As a poor person and someone who now writes extensively about social and economic justice, I've often noticed a lack of a focus on poverty appearing in news cycles or in debates among White House contenders.

I think my biggest role as a parent is teaching empathy.

Americans, if anything, do not like to be told to cut back.

You need to listen to people in your own communities and you especially need to listen to people of color.

As a low-income worker, my take-home pay, at best, was about $200 a week.

We don't like to listen to people who are still angry, who are still in poverty, especially people of color.

There is no planning in a life of fighting to keep a roof over your head. It's pure survival.

I'm white. I have privileges as a parent that many others don't. Of not only teaching but expecting my daughter to stand up for herself because I have no fear that harm will come to her when she does. I am reassured by her teachers that her willfulness will do her good as she gets older.

I didn't always handle the stress of raising my kids on little money well.

This resounding cry of 'welfare to work' enrages me because something like 75% or 80% of people who are on government assistance are already working.

I am, by default, a healthy eater. I limit processed food, eat fresh ingredients, all of that.

I worked part-time cleaning houses, and went to school full-time.

I expect to work for as long as I can. I can't imagine retirement.

It was interesting to be in a position where I got to know people through cleaning their houses, but I became disenchanted.

It's unreasonable to expect people who scrape to get by to have emergency savings.

It didn't take me long to go from financial stability to fearing homelessness.

I would never want people to point at me and say, 'Well, she got herself off of food stamps, so anybody can if they work hard enough.' It's just not true.

While I'd been in school, I had a nagging thought that it'd be so much easier to quit all this higher education nonsense and get a full-time job at wages low enough to still qualify for government assistance.

Most people don't see themselves as sitting on that bottom rung as a defense mechanism. The more they blame poor people for their poverty, the further they feel from being in the same place. Even the working poor who qualify for food, childcare and housing benefits don't see themselves as such.

I had a crazy amount of success as a writer, which isn't normal by any means.

I expected college to feel like a major accomplishment. I walked across the stage, eight months pregnant with my almost seven-year-old daughter watching in the audience.

When I saw the letter of acceptance for Snap - the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, popularly known as food stamps - it was a moment of gratitude, and brief catharsis and relief. Still, I knew it wasn't a socially acceptable means to feed my family with. I saw the memes friends posted, chastising people on welfare.

I graduated from college in 2014 and started freelance writing. I'd write anything that paid, including filling local events calendars for hourly rates.

Single parents do not have the luxury of purchasing an abundance of healthy foods for their kids to try. I know this. As a single mom, I've been there.

I graduated with a bachelor's degree, $60,000 in debt, and due to have a baby in a month.

For nearly a decade, I thought it was obvious that I was poor.

I think there's a huge gap between no longer qualifying for benefits and being able to afford a life without benefits. When I went off government assistance - six months before I got the book deal - there were some months that were lean, I mean literally lean, like I lost a lot of weight. I could barely afford food.

As a single mother for 10 years, I brought in around $12,000 annually.

I didn't grow up in systemic poverty.

During my last year of college, I maxed out what small available credit I had after declaring bankruptcy in my mid-20s to pay medical bills.