Ethel Waters Quotes

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Ethel Waters

Profession : Musician

Birth : October 31, 1896

You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of a family. Just do your job right and your kids will love you.

Ethel Waters

Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news.

Ethel Waters

We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.

Ethel Waters

I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.

Ethel Waters

When you dominate other people's emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege.

Ethel Waters

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

Ethel Waters

Elia Kazan understood my problems. He was able to bring out the very best in me. He gave me credit for my intelligence.

Ethel Waters

There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.

Ethel Waters

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

I am an isolationist.

Ethel Waters

I've never been able to feel that there is anything undignified about making your living by the sweat of your brow.

Ethel Waters

I want affection and tenderness desperately, but there's something in me that prevents me from handing it out.

Ethel Waters

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

Ethel Waters

Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.

Ethel Waters

There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.

Ethel Waters

Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners.

Ethel Waters

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.

Ethel Waters

Negroes are human beings with exactly the same faults and virtues as members of the other races.

Ethel Waters

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

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