101 Quotes by Ethel Waters

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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