Quotes from Ethel Waters

There had been lots of crises in my life. And there was plenty of spunk and battle cry still left in me.

If whites bored me, it was because they bored themselves. They seemed to get little fun out of life and were desperately lonely.

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.

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

New York is only 97 miles from Philadelphia but was the Big Time as no other American city has ever been.

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.

We never had a bathtub. Mom would bathe me in the wooden or tin washtub in the kitchen, or in a big lard can.

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.

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.

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.

Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me.

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.

In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live.

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

I am somebody cause God don't make no junk

God doesn't make junk

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.

Ignorance, foolishness, and poverty-we owned this by our birth.

I cannot help feeling I would have been happier with a husband and chidren of my own.

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.

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

We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.

My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.

No one in the world can beat Ella Fitzgerald as a riff singer.