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All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.

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
Epidemic
Epidemics
Epic
Two
Things
Men
Life

More quotes by Ethel Waters

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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.
Ethel Waters
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I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters
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All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.
Ethel Waters
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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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The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.
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We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters
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Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
Ethel Waters
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My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.
Ethel Waters
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Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners.
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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.
Ethel Waters
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Somehow, the things my mother wanted to do, the release in evangelism she sought with such frenzy, were transferred to me.
Ethel Waters
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There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.
Ethel Waters
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We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters
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When I act I try to express the suffering or joy I've known during my lifetime.
Ethel Waters
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There is a certain type of white Southerner who respects certain Negro individuals.
Ethel Waters