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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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Ethel Waters
Age: 80 †
Born: 1896
Born: October 31
Died: 1977
Died: September 1
Film Actor
Jazz Musician
Singer
Stage Actor
Vocalist
Chester
Pennsylvania
Mom
Save
Childhood
Influence
Greatest
Vice
Wanted
Lust
Vices
Drinking

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I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.
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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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Whenever I write for hotel reservations, I always enclose a set of rules I have made for the hotels.
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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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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 had a probing mind and an elephant memory.
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There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.
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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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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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My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.
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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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Today I blame only certain agents for my long eclipse as a public entertainer.
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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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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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All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.
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Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
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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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I found that a couple of bottles of beer would give me a lift, but the third bottle would sober me up.
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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.
Ethel Waters