Quote

There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.

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
People
Outlet
Outlets
Blues
Singing
Emotional
Always

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 have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.
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I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.
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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.
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Whenever I write for hotel reservations, I always enclose a set of rules I have made for the hotels.
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My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.
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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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My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.
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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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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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I'm not afraid to die. I'm looking forward to it. I know the Lord has His arms wrapped around this big sparrow.
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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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All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.
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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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You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
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Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.
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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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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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We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.
Ethel Waters