Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story

Liz Murray:
I'd give it back, all of it, if I could have my family back.

Teacher at Public School:
Chris, would you like to try diagram number 12?

Chris:
No.

Chris:
But you are not a freak?

Liz Murray:
No.

Chris:
O... That's to bad. I am.

Teacher at Public School:
Elizabeth is a fine name. What's your problem with it?

Liz Murray:
My mom calls me Elizabeth when she is going insane.

Liz Murray:
My mother was dying. My father was gone. But I had to believe that their road would rise up to meet me.

Liz Murray:
I was 15 when I went out in the world. What's a home anyway? A roof? A bed? A place where when you go there, they have to take you? If so, then I was 15 when I became homeless.

Liz Murray:
But I still didn't know how to be in school. I still didn't know how to be normal.

Jean Murray:
Lisa said you stopped going to school.

Liz Murray:
I am going to go back.

Jean Murray:
When?

Liz Murray:
When you get better.

Liz Murray:
I knew at that moment I had to make a choice. I could submit to everything that was happening and live a life of excuses... or I could push myself. I could push myself and make my life good.

Liz Murray:
Sometimes I feel like there is skin upon the world. And those of us who are born under it, can see threw it. We just can't get threw it.

David:
You're in.

Liz Murray:
But you told the others you wouldn't let them know until Friday.

David:
You're in.

Liz Murray:
I'm smart. I know I can succeed. I just need a chance. A chance to climb out of this place I've born in. Everyone I know are angry and tired. They're trying to survive. But I know that there is a world out there that is better, that's better developed. And I want to live in it.

Liz Murray:
I love you, dad.

Peter:
That's a waste of energy.

Liz Murray:
I'm 17. I don't want to be 21 before I finish high school.

David:
So you're trying to do four years of high school in what, three?

Liz Murray:
Two.

Lisa:
I loved going to school so much. You never went to school. Why would they gave you a scholarship?

Liz Murray:
Because I'm homeless and I'm doing really well on school.

Lisa:
You're not homeless, Liz. You could stay here.

Liz Murray:
No, I couldn't.

David:
[about Harvard] Does it look like you thought it would?

Liz Murray:
Better.

Chris:
I don't want to go to school. I don't belong there and neither do you.

Liz Murray:
Yes, I do.

Chris:
You think they let people like us in to Harvard?

Liz Murray:
I loved my mother, so much. She was a drug addict. She was an alcoholic. She was legally blind. She was a schizophrenic. But I never forgot, that she did love me. Even if, if she did. All the time. All the time. All the... All the time.