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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.

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
Whole
Dollars
Hard
Husband
Never
Week
Life
Five
Place
Find
Earned
Live
Six
Without
Mom

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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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When I act I try to express the suffering or joy I've known during my lifetime.
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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'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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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 could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.
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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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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 have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.
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All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.
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Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners.
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Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
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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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There is a certain type of white Southerner who respects certain Negro individuals.
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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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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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All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.
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I had a probing mind and an elephant memory.
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My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.
Ethel Waters