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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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Ethel Waters
Age: 80 †
Born: 1896
Born: October 31
Died: 1977
Died: September 1
Film Actor
Jazz Musician
Singer
Stage Actor
Vocalist
Chester
Pennsylvania
Express
Lifetime
Joy
Known
Suffering
Trying

More quotes by Ethel Waters

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I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.
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
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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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If whites bored me, it was because they bored themselves. They seemed to get little fun out of life and were desperately lonely.
Ethel Waters
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I had a probing mind and an elephant memory.
Ethel Waters
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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.
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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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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Whenever I write for hotel reservations, I always enclose a set of rules I have made for the hotels.
Ethel Waters
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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.
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
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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.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters
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All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.
Ethel Waters
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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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We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.
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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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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Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
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