Childhood and Young Adult Life
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Waters is the daughter of Betty and Junior Waters, a famed jazz musician; her great aunt, Ethel Waters, was one of the first African-American vocalists to appear in mainstream Hollywood musicals. The family lived in New Jersey for a while but they again moved to Washington, D.C.. At age eleven she began writing poetry and took her writing seriously enough to be inducted into the American Poetry Society when she was 14, the youngest person ever to receive that honor.
She studied business and computer science at Howard University, but her creative work dropped off as she found less time for it. After earning her college degree in 1985, Waters secured a job as a computer technician with the Washington, D.C. parole board, making a living that would support her two children.
Read more about this topic: Crystal Waters
Famous quotes containing the words adult life, childhood and, childhood, young, adult and/or life:
“For most of my adult life, I have been an emotional hit-and- run driver—that is, a reporter. I made people like me, trust me, open their hearts and their minds to me, and cry and bleed on to the pages of my neat little notebooks, and then I went back to a safe place and made a story out of it.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Adolescence is a border between childhood and adulthood. Like all borders, it’s teeming with energy and fraught with danger.”
—Mary Pipher (20th century)
“What sacred instinct did inspire
My soul in childhood with a hope so strong?”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)
“I am fifty-two years of age. I am a bishop in the Anglican Church, and a few people might be constrained to say that I was reasonably responsible. In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute—a white skin.”
—Desmond Tutu (b. 1931)
“The truth is, no matter how trying they become, babies two and under don’t have the ability to make moral choices, so they can’t be “bad.” That category only exists in the adult mind.”
—Anne Cassidy (20th century)
“Newspapermen are either drunkards or idealists, Miss Rutledge. I’m afraid I’m both. But however soiled his hands, the journalist goes staggering through life with a beacon raised.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)