Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.

To me, bitterness is the under-arm odor of wishful weakness. It is the graceless acknowledgment of defeat.

Gods always love the people who make 'em.

I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.

Slogans can be worse than swords if they are only put in the right mouths.

I regret all of my books.

I am her friend, and her tongue is in my mouth. I can speak her sentiments for her, though Ethel Waters can do very well indeed in speaking for herself.

I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief.

My head was full of misty fumes of doubt.

I note that the Africa loves to depict the grace of reptiles.

To a haughty belly, kindness is hard to swallow and harder to digest.

Every morning the world flung itself over and exposed the town to the sun.

I was born in a Negro town.

The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor.

The whole matter revolves around the self-respect of my people. How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody toassociate with me who does not wish me near them?

I been through living for years. I just ain't dead yet.

My sense of humor will always stand in the way of my seeing myself, my family, my race or my nation as the whole intent of the universe.

When I pitched headforemost into the world I landed in the crib of Negroism.

Africa has her mouth on Moses.

You'se something tuh make uh man forgit to git old and forgit tuh die.

The liquor of statecraft is distilled from the mash you got.

Tea Cake, the son of the Evening Sun, had to die for loving her.

Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept.

Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.

People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor.

He has only heard what I felt.

Janie knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making.

It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful.

It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.

No, I do not weep at the world. I'm too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Now, women forget all the things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.

...you got tuh go there tuh know there.

The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning and raced across the blue dome and dipped into the sea of fire every evening.

An envious heart makes a treacherous ear. They done 'heard' bout you just what they hope done happened.

So I do not pray. I accept the means at my disposal for working out my destiny. It seems to me that I have been given a mind and will power for that very purpose.

They sat on the boarding house porch and saw the sun plunge into the same crack in the earth from which the night emerged.

Pheoby's hungry listening helped Janie to tell her story.

No, I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Nanny's words made Janie's kiss across the gatepost seem like a manure pile after a rain

I have been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows with a harp and sword in my hands.

Faith hasn't got no eyes but she's long-legged.

It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble and then not worth much after you get it.

Love I find is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.

I want a busy life a just mind and a timely death.

Once you wake up thought in a man you can never put it to sleep again.

Women forget all the things they don't want to remember and remember everything they don't want to forget.

They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without master...