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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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When I act I try to express the suffering or joy I've known during my lifetime.
Ethel Waters
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We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.
Ethel Waters
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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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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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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.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters
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I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.
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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I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.
Ethel Waters
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You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
Ethel Waters
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There is a certain type of white Southerner who respects certain Negro individuals.
Ethel Waters
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All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.
Ethel Waters
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Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters
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There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.
Ethel Waters
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All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.
Ethel Waters
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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.
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.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters