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I am somebody cause God don't make no junk
Ethel Waters -
I could depend a lot on my shaking, though I never shimmied vulgarly and only to express myself.
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.
Ethel Waters -
All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.
Ethel Waters -
Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news.
Ethel Waters -
There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.
Ethel Waters -
Though I was a Catholic, I recognized that Protestant churches had something.
Ethel Waters -
We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters -
My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.
Ethel Waters -
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 -
When I first went on the stage I was 17 and under the legal age for performers.
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 -
You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
Ethel Waters
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New York is only 97 miles from Philadelphia but was the Big Time as no other American city has ever been.
Ethel Waters -
Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
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 -
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 -
I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.
Ethel Waters -
I have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.
Ethel Waters