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I wanted to be with the kind of people I'd grown up with, but you can't go back to them and be one of them again, no matter how hard you try.
Ethel Waters
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Ethel Waters
Age: 80 †
Born: 1896
Born: October 31
Died: 1977
Died: September 1
Film Actor
Jazz Musician
Singer
Stage Actor
Vocalist
Chester
Pennsylvania
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Hard
Trying
Kind
Teenager
People
Grown
Inspirational
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More quotes by Ethel Waters
I have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.
Ethel Waters
After years in white theaters I dreaded working in colored houses. The noise, the stomping, whistling, and cheering that hadn't annoyed me when I was young was now something I dreaded.
Ethel Waters
In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live.
Ethel Waters
There had been lots of crises in my life. And there was plenty of spunk and battle cry still left in me.
Ethel Waters
Somehow, the things my mother wanted to do, the release in evangelism she sought with such frenzy, were transferred to me.
Ethel Waters
You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
Ethel Waters
I dressed plain, but my partners were always spending more money on clothes than I could afford.
Ethel Waters
I found that a couple of bottles of beer would give me a lift, but the third bottle would sober me up.
Ethel Waters
I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.
Ethel Waters
I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.
Ethel Waters
Today I blame only certain agents for my long eclipse as a public entertainer.
Ethel Waters
We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.
Ethel Waters
We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.
Ethel Waters
I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.
Ethel Waters
The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.
Ethel Waters
Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.
Ethel Waters
Whenever I write for hotel reservations, I always enclose a set of rules I have made for the hotels.
Ethel Waters
I had always loved John Ford's pictures. And I came to love him, too, but I was frightened to death working for him. He used the shock treatment while directing me.
Ethel Waters
Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.
Ethel Waters
Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
Ethel Waters