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When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money.

I grew up in an era of pretty severe poverty. My parents weathered the Great Depression, and money was always a very big concern. I was weaned on a shortage mentality and placed in foster homes largely because there simply wasn't enough money to take care of the most basic of needs.

When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee.

When I was born, the economy wasn't in a great state; it was the Depression, and my father had to be quick to try and find work.

As a young man, I lived through the Great Depression, when banks failed and so many lost their jobs and homes and went hungry. I was fortunate to have a job at a canning factory that paid 25 cents an hour.

In the Great Depression, you bought something if you had the cash to buy it.

I'd never had money growing up, and it's never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that.

Growing up, I didn't know anything about money other than we didn't have any.

The Depression was an incredibly dramatic episode - an era of stock-market crashes, breadlines, bank runs and wild currency speculation, with the storm clouds of war gathering ominously in the background... For my money, few periods are so replete with human interest.

I grew up in austerity in the 1940s and 1950s.