Quotes By Ethel Waters

When you dominate other people's emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege.

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

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

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

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 are all gifted. That is our inheritance.

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

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