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I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.

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
Middle
Open
Shows
Always
Perform
Close

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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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Today I blame only certain agents for my long eclipse as a public entertainer.
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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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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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My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.
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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.
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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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You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
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There is a great supply of amateur undertakers in show business.
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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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There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.
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We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.
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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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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'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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My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.
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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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I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought 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.
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There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.
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