Quote

My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.

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
Family
Without
Whole
Harmonized
Accompany
Instruments
Sing

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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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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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Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.
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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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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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My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.
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There is a great supply of amateur undertakers in show business.
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You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
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I had a probing mind and an elephant memory.
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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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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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We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.
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I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.
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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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I want affection and tenderness desperately, but there's something in me that prevents me from handing it out.
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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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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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The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.
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Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
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