Top 40 Quotes by Ethel Waters

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.

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.

Somehow, the things my mother wanted to do, the release in evangelism she sought with such frenzy, were transferred to 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.

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

There is a great supply of amateur undertakers in show business.

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

Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.

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

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