Quotes by Zora Neale Hurston

There is something about poverty that smells like death.

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

No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond.

Mystery is the essence of divinity.

John will never forsake the weak and the helpless, nor fail to bring hope to the hopeless. That is what they believe, and so they do not worry. They go on and laugh and sing. Things are bound to come out right tomorrow. That is the secret of Negro song and laughter.

Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what is was.

I do not share the gloomy thought that Negroes in America are doomed to be stomped out bodaciously, nor even shackled to the bottom of things. Of course some of them will be tromped out, and some will always be at the bottom, keeping company with other bottom-folks.

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

Everybody is two beings: one lives and flourishes in the daylight and stands guard. The other being walks and howls at night.

The one who makes the idols never worships them, however tenderly he might have molded the clay. You cannot have knowledge and worship at the same time. Mystery is the essence of divinity. Gods must keep their distances from men.

For the first time she could see a man's head naked of its skull. Saw the cunning thoughts race in and out through the caves and promontories of his mind long before they darted through the tunnel of his mouth.

Look lak she been livin' through uh hundred years in January without one day of spring.

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.

If it was so honorable and glorious to be black, why was it the yellow-skinned people among us had so much prestige?

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

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.

You tries tuh be so much-knowin'. You got tuh learn how tuh speak when you spokin to, come when youse called.
Ah ain't got tuh do but two things -- stay black and die, Sister Berry snapped.

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

There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food.

I have a strong suspicion . that much that passes for constant love is a golded- up moment walking in its sleep.

Finally, she grew quiet. After that, coherent thought. With this, stalked through her a cold, bloody rage; Hours of this; a period of introspection; a space of retrospection; then a mixture of both. Out of this, an awful calm.

Jes' 'cause women folks ain't got no big muscled arm and fistes like jugs, folks claim they's weak vessels, but dass uh lie. Dat piece uh red flannel she got hung 'tween her jaws is equal tuh all the fistes God ever made and man ever seen.

A woman robbed of her love is more terrible than an army with banners.

But as de old folks always say, Ah'm born but Ah ain't dead. No tellin' whut Ah'm liable tuh do yet.

I began to worry a bit. Ella kept on hurling slurs. So I said, Come on, Big Sweet, we got to go to home.
Nope, Ah ain't got to do nothin' but die and stay black.

She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love. Most humans didn't love one another nohow, and this mislove was so strong that even common blood couldn't overcome it all the time.

But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all.

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

Affection makes your spirit slither out from its concealing spot.

Folklore is the boiled-down juice, or pot-likker, of human living.

I have been amazed by the Anglo-Saxon's lack of curiosity about the internal lives and emotions of the Negroes, and for that matter, any non-Anglo-Saxon peoples within our borders, above the class of unskilled labor.

Bitterness is the coward's revenge on the world for having been hurt.

When the people sat around on the porch and passed around the pictures of their thoughts for the others to look at and see, it was nice. The fact that the thought pictures were always crayon enlargements of life made it even nicer to listen to.

Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? The wide belt of the universe has no need for finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance.

Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.

Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves.

If you haven't got it, you can't show it. If you have got it, you can't hide it.

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.

Being under my own roof, and my personality not invaded by others makes a lot of difference in my outlook on life and everything. Oh, to be once more alone in a house!

Then you must tell 'em dat love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.

It would be against all nature for all the Negroes to be either at the bottom, top, or in between. We will go where the internal drive carries us like everybody else. It is up to the individual.

And I can't die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I'm a cracked plate.

So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time.

He looked like the love thoughts of women.

Janie had robbed him of his illusion of irresistible maleness that all men cherish, which was terrible.

It is hard to apply oneself to study when there is no money to pay for food and lodging. I almost never explain these things when folks are asking me why I don't do this or that.

The morning air was like a new dress. That made her feel the apron tied around her waist. She untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the road and walked on, picking flowers and making a bouquet… From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything.

Well, she thought, that big old dawg with the hatred in his eyes had killed her after all.

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

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

But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate.

Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.

Now they got to look into me loving Tea Cake and see whether it was done right or not! They don't know if life is a mess of corn-meal dumplings, and if love is a bed-quilt!

It seemed to me that the human beings I met reacted pretty much the same to the same stimuli. Different idioms,yes. Circumstances and conditions having power to influence, yes. Inherent difference, no.

Please God, please suh, don't let him love nobody else but me. Maybe Ah'm is uh fool, Lawd, lak dey say, but Lawd, Ah been so lonesome, and Ah been waitin', Jesus. Ah done waited uh long time.

Oh to be a pear tree -- any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!

I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living.

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me.

If dat wuz mah wife, said Walter Thomas, Ah'd kill her cemetery dead.

Every tub sits on its bottom.

You know they say a white man git in some kind of trouble, he'll fret and fret until he kill hisself. A n****r git into trouble, he'll fret for a while, then g'wan to sleep.

Dat's de reason de sister in black works harder than anybody else in the world. De white man tells de n****r to work and he takes and tells his wife.

Learning without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey's back.

The sun had become a light yellow yolk and was walking with red legs across the sky.

Perhaps love is a compelling necessity imposed on man by God that has something to do with suffering.

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

I made up my mind to keep my feelings to myself since they did not seem to matter to anyone else but me.

You heard me. You ain't blind.

She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman.

Taint no law on earth dat kin make a man be decent if it aint in 'im.

Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them.

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

She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.

Silence is all the genius a fool has.

Distance is the only cure for certain diseases.

Such as I am, I am a precious gift.

I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.

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.

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.

All of the people took it up and sung it over and over until it was wrung dry, and no further innovations of tone and tempo were conceivable. Then they hushed and ate barbecue.

While I was in the research field in 1929, the idea of Jonah's Gourd Vine came to me. I had written a few short stories, but the idea of attempting a book seemed so big that I gazed at it in the quiet of the night, but hid it away from even myself in daylight.

Common danger made common friends.

For what can excuse a man in the eyes of other men for lack of strength?

But nothin' can stop you from wishin'.

She knew because she looked.

It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such. I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world.

Ah wouldn't give uh bitch uh bone if she treed uh terrapin.

I thought that when they said Atlantic Charter, that meant me and everybody in Africa and Asia and everywhere. But it seems like the Atlantic is an ocean that does not touch anywhere but North America and Europe.

She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.

It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.

Tain't no use in you cryin' ... But folks is meant to cry 'bout somethin' or other. Better leave things de way dey is. Youse young yet. No tellin' whut mout happen befo' you die.

People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor.

Look lak we done run our conversation from grass roots tuh pine trees.

Looka heah, Tea Cake, if you ever go off from me and have a good time lak dat and then come back heah tellin' me how nice Ah is, Ah specks tuh kill yuh dead. You heah me?

It was the meanest moment of eternity.

For four hundred years the blacks of Haiti had yearned for peace. for three hundred years the island was spoken of as a paradise of riches and pleasures, but that was in reference to the whites to whom the spirit of the land gave welcome. Haiti has meant split blood and tears for blacks.

The very best place to be in all the world is St. Mary's parish, Jamaica. And the best spot in St. Mary's is Port Maria, though all of St. Mary's is fine. Old Maker put himself to a lot of trouble to make that part of the island of Jamaica, for everything there is perfect.

Justice, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

I love myself when I am laughing.

Tea Cake love me in blue, so Ah wears it. Jody ain't never in his life picked out no color for me.

We proaged on thru the woods that was full of magnolia, pine, cedar, oak, cypress, hickory, and many kinds of trees whose names I do not know. It is hard to know all the trees in Florida.

It costs you something to do good!

I regret all of my books.

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.

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

It seems that fighting is a game where everybody is the loser.

Those that don't got it, can't show it. Those that got it, can't hide it.

No man may make another free.

It's no use of talking unless people understand what you say.

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.

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.

So the brother in black offers to these United States the source of courage that endures, and laughter.

The man who interprets Nature is always held in great honor.

Gods always behave like the people who make them.

People can be slave-ships in shoes.

Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.

Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow.