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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
Perform
Close
Middle
Open
Shows
Always

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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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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 never posed as a saint. I would have slept with a man for nothing if I liked him well enough.
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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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Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.
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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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Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
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All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.
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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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I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.
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I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.
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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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We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.
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You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
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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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Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.
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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 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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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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