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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
Without
Whole
Harmonized
Accompany
Instruments
Sing
Family

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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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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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All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.
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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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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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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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I dressed plain, but my partners were always spending more money on clothes than I could afford.
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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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I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.
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What broke Mom's heart was realizing that her children knew nothing and cared nothing about the better side of life.
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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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The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.
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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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Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
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We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.
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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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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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Today I blame only certain agents for my long eclipse as a public entertainer.
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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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