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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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We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.
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.
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I dressed plain, but my partners were always spending more money on clothes than I could afford.
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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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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'm not afraid to die. I'm looking forward to it. I know the Lord has His arms wrapped around this big sparrow.
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I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.
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.
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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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I had a probing mind and an elephant memory.
Ethel Waters
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I have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.
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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Whenever I write for hotel reservations, I always enclose a set of rules I have made for the hotels.
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There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.
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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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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There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.
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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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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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