Ethel Waters Quotes

United States, Actress
October 31, 1896 – September, 1, 1977.

Ethel Waters was an American singer and actress. Waters frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, but she began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Waters notable recordings include "Dinah", "Stormy Weather", "Taking a Chance on Love", "Heat Wave", "Supper Time", "Am I Blue?", "Cabin in the Sky", "I'm Coming Virginia", and her version of the spiritual "His Eye Is on the Sparrow". Waters was the second African American, after Hattie McDaniel, to be nominated for an Academy Award. She was the first African-American to star on her own television show, in 1939, and the first African-American woman to be nominated for an Emmy Award, in 1962.

Also known as Singer

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
- Fun
- Lonely
- Bored
My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.

Ethel Waters
- Mother
- Father
- Knives

Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.

Ethel Waters
- Praise
- Criticize
What impressed me most about New York were its huge apartment houses.

Ethel Waters
- House
- Huge
- Apartment
You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.

Ethel Waters
- Family
- Mother
- Persons
I never accepted the idea that I was all through. I guess no person who has once been a star can do that, ever.

Ethel Waters
- Ideas
- Persons
- Stars
Nothing can beat the smell of dew and flowers and the odor that comes out of the earth when the sun goes down.

Ethel Waters
- Earth
- Flower
- Beats
I found that a couple of bottles of beer would give me a lift, but the third bottle would sober me up.

Ethel Waters
- Giving
- Couple
- Found

I am somebody cause God don't make no junk

Ethel Waters
- Causes
- Junk
We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.

Ethel Waters
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
- People
- Trying
- Kind
If I wanted pity, I got it because I'm illegitimate. And when I didn't want it I was mean and nasty.

Ethel Waters
- Want
- Mean
- Nasty
Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.

Ethel Waters
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.

Ethel Waters
- Men
- Sleep
- Happens

All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.

Ethel Waters
- People
- Wealthy
When I first went on the stage I was 17 and under the legal age for performers.

Ethel Waters
- Age
- Firsts
- Stage
New York is only 97 miles from Philadelphia but was the Big Time as no other American city has ever been.

Ethel Waters
- Cities
Though I was a Catholic, I recognized that Protestant churches had something.

Ethel Waters
- Church
- Catholic
The big compliment came from the beer drinkers who didn't know me. They wouldn't drink or move when I sang. If they had their glasses in mid-air, the glasses wouldn't come down.

Ethel Waters
- Moving
- Air
- Drink
I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.

Ethel Waters
- Shows
- Middle

I have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.

Ethel Waters
- Reason
- Plenty