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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.

Ethel Waters

Life

Mom

HusbBeing

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

Ethel Waters

Living

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

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

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

Ethel Waters

Family

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

Idea

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

Ethel Waters

Hurt

Reason

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.

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

Ethel Waters

HusbFeeling

Help

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

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

People

Difference

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

Work

Want

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

Ethel Waters

Life

Men

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

Ethel Waters

Life

People

After years in white theaters I dreaded working in colored houses. The noise, the stomping, whistling, and cheering that hadn't annoyed me when I was young was now something I dreaded.