Ethel Waters Quotes
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I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.
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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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We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.
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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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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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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 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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Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news.
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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 dressed plain, but my partners were always spending more money on clothes than I could afford.
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I know the most terrible thing that can happen to a woman. That is the gang-up. Men put you to sleep with their drops and one man after another goes in and takes you.
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I had a probing mind and an elephant memory.
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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 could depend a lot on my shaking, though I never shimmied vulgarly and only to express myself.
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There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.
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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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Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.
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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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What impressed me most about New York were its huge apartment houses.
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Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
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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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What broke Mom's heart was realizing that her children knew nothing and cared nothing about the better side of life.