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I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.

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
Wedlock
Brought
Nobody
Born

More quotes by Ethel Waters

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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's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.
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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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There is a great supply of amateur undertakers in show business.
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There is a certain type of white Southerner who respects certain Negro individuals.
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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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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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I never posed as a saint. I would have slept with a man for nothing if I liked him well enough.
Ethel Waters
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We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.
Ethel Waters
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Though I was a Catholic, I recognized that Protestant churches had something.
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Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
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My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.
Ethel Waters
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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 you dominate other people's emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege.
Ethel Waters
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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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The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.
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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 have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters