Ethel Waters Quotes
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Though I was excited about the Sojourner Truth play, it was not reassuring to think that my entire future might depend on the success of that one show.
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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.
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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.
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We never had a bathtub. Mom would bathe me in the wooden or tin washtub in the kitchen, or in a big lard can.
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I don't care to dress up except when it is necessary or good for my business.
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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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We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.
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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.
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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 dressed plain, but my partners were always spending more money on clothes than I could afford.
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I am an isolationist.
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I have no acting technique I act instinctively. That's why I can't play any role that isn't based on something in my life.
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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'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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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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The white audiences thought I was white, my features being what they are, and at every performance I'd have to take off my gloves to prove I was a spade.
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I could depend a lot on my shaking, though I never shimmied vulgarly and only to express myself.
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I had a probing mind and an elephant memory.
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Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.
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Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news.
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Mom never quit on me. My only regret is that she didn't live long enough to share some of the money and comforts my work in show business has brought me.
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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.
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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.
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What impressed me most about New York were its huge apartment houses.