Quotes from Ethel Waters

It has been an ache and a joy both to look over this big shoulder of mine at all my yesterdays.

There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.

If I wanted pity, I got it because I'm illegitimate. And when I didn't want it I was mean and nasty.

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.

All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.

I never was coddled, or liked, or understood by my family.

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

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.

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

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

I never accepted the idea that I was all through. I guess no person who has once been a star can do that, ever.

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

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

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