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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
Influence
Greatest
Vice
Wanted
Lust
Vices
Drinking
Mom
Save
Childhood

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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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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 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 want affection and tenderness desperately, but there's something in me that prevents me from handing it out.
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I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
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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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My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.
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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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There is a certain type of white Southerner who respects certain Negro individuals.
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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'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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