I guess something that we're beginning to learn is that
people who have been poor, or who are poor, or who've been
poor for a long time, live so close to the edge that things
like moral philosophy, poetry, are more easily meaningful to
them than they are to people who have less difficult lives.
-- Earl Shorris author of New American Blues: A
Journey Through Poverty to Democracy in an interview on "Talk
of the Nation" 12/29/1997