Quote

Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.

Ethel Waters

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ethel Waters
Age: 80 †
Born: 1896
Born: October 31
Died: 1977
Died: September 1
Film Actor
Jazz Musician
Singer
Stage Actor
Vocalist
Chester
Pennsylvania
Burned
Fire
Like
Authenticity

More quotes by Ethel Waters

Image
My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.
Ethel Waters
Image
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.
Ethel Waters
Image
Today I blame only certain agents for my long eclipse as a public entertainer.
Ethel Waters
Image
You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
Ethel Waters
Image
We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.
Ethel Waters
Image
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
Image
When I act I try to express the suffering or joy I've known during my lifetime.
Ethel Waters
Image
Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
Ethel Waters
Image
When you dominate other people's emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege.
Ethel Waters
Image
There had been lots of crises in my life. And there was plenty of spunk and battle cry still left in me.
Ethel Waters
Image
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.
Ethel Waters
Image
I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.
Ethel Waters
Image
I dressed plain, but my partners were always spending more money on clothes than I could afford.
Ethel Waters
Image
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.
Ethel Waters
Image
My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.
Ethel Waters
Image
There is a certain type of white Southerner who respects certain Negro individuals.
Ethel Waters
Image
We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.
Ethel Waters
Image
I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.
Ethel Waters
Image
Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.
Ethel Waters
Image
Somehow, the things my mother wanted to do, the release in evangelism she sought with such frenzy, were transferred to me.
Ethel Waters