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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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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
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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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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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The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.
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You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
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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
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I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.
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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There had been lots of crises in my life. And there was plenty of spunk and battle cry still left in me.
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 never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.
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.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters
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I dressed plain, but my partners were always spending more money on clothes than I could afford.
Ethel Waters
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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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Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me.
Ethel Waters
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I found that a couple of bottles of beer would give me a lift, but the third bottle would sober me up.
Ethel Waters
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Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.
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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We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.
Ethel Waters