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. ”

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

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. ”

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. ”

Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners. ”

I never accepted the idea that I was all through. I guess no person who has once been a star can do that, ever. ”

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. ”

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. ”

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

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. ”