Quotes by Ethel Waters

About Ethel Waters:

Ethel Waters was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.

Ethel Waters

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

Ethel Waters

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.

Ethel Waters

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

Ethel Waters

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

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.

Ethel Waters

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

Ethel Waters

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.

Ethel Waters

Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news.

Ethel Waters

Though I was excited about the Sojourner Truth play, it was not reassuring to think that my entire future might depend on the success of that one show.

Ethel Waters

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

Ethel Waters

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

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.

Ethel Waters

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.

Ethel Waters

There's no hypocrisy in Hell's Kitchen.

Ethel Waters

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

Ethel Waters

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.

Ethel Waters

The big compliment came from the beer drinkers who didn't know me. They wouldn't drink or move when I sang. If they had their glasses in mid-air, the glasses wouldn't come down.

Ethel Waters

Nothing can beat the smell of dew and flowers and the odor that comes out of the earth when the sun goes down.

Ethel Waters

No one in the world can beat Ella Fitzgerald as a riff singer.

Ethel Waters

Author Bio

  • NameEthel Waters
  • Descriptionactress, vocalist
  • BornOctober 31, 1896
  • DiedSeptember 1, 1977
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionActor; Singer; Jazz Musician
  • AwardsGospel Music Hall Of Fame