The Subprimes Quotes

“It doesn't bother you that because of your credit you can't get a real job?' Sargam said. 'You a politician?' another man said. 'This is the greatest country in the world, or it was until the politicians and media ruined it, made it hard for business.' 'Hard for business?' Sargam said. 'Do you really think it's hard for business in America? How much are you getting an hour? Five dollars? Five fifty?' There were murmurs of assent from around the hillside. 'You're barely making enough to eat on and pay for the gas to get you to the next day's work.”
― Karl Taro Greenfeld, The Subprimes

“There's something wrong in the world,' Sargam said, 'when good people, honest people, can't sleep under a roof or share a meal around a table.”
― Karl Taro Greenfeld, The Subprimes

“THIS SCENE WAS REPEATED IN every previously uninhabited nook, elbow, spit, lot, and underpass throughout the foreclosed and abandoned suburbs and exurbs and trailer parks of America, now squatted by the millions who had walked out on mortgages, been foreclosed upon, or simply could no longer afford a fixed address. They were all lumped together by the media into a category called 'subprimes,' a less descriptive label, perhaps, than 'homeless,' but one that in this era of raw, rapacious capitalism gave all the information anyone needed: the credit rating of the men, women, and children who inhabited these Ryanvilles was subprime.”
― Karl Taro Greenfeld, The Subprimes

“That left Jeb to work for whatever the bosses offered under the National Right to Work Act--the minimum wage having been abolished--enough to keep them fed and the car gassed but not enough for a roof or to save much more than coins.”
― Karl Taro Greenfeld, The Subprimes

“God bless you,” Jeb said. “Not God. It’s just people. People helping people. That’s all we got.”
― Karl Taro Greenfeld, The Subprimes

“At no point in his cramming for his upcoming confrontation with Gemma did the words “I’m sorry” cross his mind.”
― Karl Taro Greenfeld, The Subprimes

“Before that, she was an elementary school teacher, until the state stripped the unions of collective bargaining rights in the Right to Learn Act, subcontracting public school education to for-profit corporations. She still missed teaching, but that was strictly an hourly-wage temp job now, for those lucky enough to get hired.”
― Karl Taro Greenfeld, The Subprimes