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I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.

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
Outsider
Outsiders
Felt
Always
Never
Belonged

More quotes by Ethel Waters

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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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I dressed plain, but my partners were always spending more money on clothes than I could afford.
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All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.
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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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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 have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.
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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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There had been lots of crises in my life. And there was plenty of spunk and battle cry still left in me.
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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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I want affection and tenderness desperately, but there's something in me that prevents me from handing it out.
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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.
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I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.
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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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Twenty-five years is a long time for a girl to live out of a trunk, and after looking over a few houses, I fell in love with one in Southwest Los Angeles.
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When I act I try to express the suffering or joy I've known during my lifetime.
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You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
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We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.
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Today I blame only certain agents for my long eclipse as a public entertainer.
Ethel Waters
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There is a certain type of white Southerner who respects certain Negro individuals.
Ethel Waters
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I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.
Ethel Waters