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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 want affection and tenderness desperately, but there's something in me that prevents me from handing it out.
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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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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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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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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The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.
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 show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.
Ethel Waters
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I had a probing mind and an elephant memory.
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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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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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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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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Today I blame only certain agents for my long eclipse as a public entertainer.
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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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'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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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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There is a certain type of white Southerner who respects certain Negro individuals.
Ethel Waters
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I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.
Ethel Waters