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I have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.

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
Reason
Shy
Plenty
Hurt

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My aunts lived on liquor and seldom felt like eating much. I don't know what's wrong about a kid stealing when he's hungry.
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Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.
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Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me.
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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.
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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.
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Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.
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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.
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The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.
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I never posed as a saint. I would have slept with a man for nothing if I liked him well enough.
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If whites bored me, it was because they bored themselves. They seemed to get little fun out of life and were desperately lonely.
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Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.
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There is a great supply of amateur undertakers in show business.
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There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.
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Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
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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.
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There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.
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I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.
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I've never been able to feel that there is anything undignified about making your living by the sweat of your brow.
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When you dominate other people's emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege.
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I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.
Ethel Waters