Zora Neale Hurston Quotes & Sayings

He ain't kissin' yo' mouf when he carry on over yuh lak dat. He's kissin' yo' foot and 'tain't in uh man tuh kiss foot long. Mouf kissin' is on uh equal and dat's natural but when dey got to bow down tuh love, dey soon straightens up. — Zora Neale Hurston

There was some more good-natured laughter at the expense of women. — Zora Neale Hurston

she constantly shifts back and forth between her "literate" narrator's voice and a highly idiomatic black voice — Zora Neale Hurston

Common danger made common friends — Zora Neale Hurston

Learning without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey's back. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

Ah done lived Grandma's way, now Ah means tuh live mine. — Zora Neale Hurston

Maybe if she had known some other way to try, she might have made his face different. But what the other way could be, she had no idea. — Zora Neale Hurston

Magic is older than writing. So nobody knows how it started. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

It was the meanest moment of eternity. — Zora Neale Hurston

He looked like the love thoughts of women. — Zora Neale Hurston

You won't git far and you won't be long, when dat big gut reach over and grab dat little one, — Zora Neale Hurston

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. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world - I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife. — Zora Neale Hurston

Work is the nearest thing to happiness that I can find. — Zora Neale Hurston

Any time you catch folks lying, they are scared of something. Lying is dodging. People with guts don't lie. They tell the truth and then if they have to, they fight it out. You lay yourself open by lying..Nothing can lick you if you never get scared. — Zora Neale Hurston

No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you. — Zora Neale Hurston

When Janie looked out of her door she saw the drifting mists gathered in the west
that cloud field of the sky
to arm themselves with thunders and march forth against the world. Louder and higher and lower and wider the sound and motion spread, mounting, sinking, darking. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

Common danger made common friends. Nothing sought a conquest over the other. — Zora Neale Hurston

Ah done been tuh de horizon and back and now Ah kin set heah in mah house and live by comparisons. — Zora Neale Hurston

The morning road 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, — Zora Neale Hurston

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.
-Zora Neale Hurston — Zora Neale Hurston

Her resolutions against Jim Meserve were just like the lightning-bugs holding a convention. They met at night and made scorning speeches against the sun and swore to do away with it and light up the world themselves. But the sun came up next morning and they all went under the leaves and owned up that the sun was boss-man in the world. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

She's got those big black eyes with plenty shiny white in them that makes them shine like brand new money and she knows what God gave women eyelashes for, too. Her hair is not what you might call straight. It's negro hair, but it's got a kind of white flavor. Like the piece of string out of a ham. It's not ham at all, but it's been around ham and got the flavor. — Zora Neale Hurston

The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

It seems to me to be true that heavens are placed in the sky because it is the unreachable. The unreachable and therefore the unknowable always seems divine
hence, religion. People need religion because the great masses fear life and its consequences. Its responsibilities weigh heavy. Feeling a weakness in the face of great forces, men seek an alliance with omnipotence to bolster up their feeling of weakness, even though the omnipotence they rely upon is a creature of their own minds. It gives them a feeling of security. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

Responding to Wright's critique, Hurston claimed that she had wanted at long last to write a black novel, and "not a treatise on sociology." It is this urge that resonates in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Beloved, and in Walker's depiction of Hurston as our prime symbol of "racial health - a sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings, a sense that is lacking in so much black writing and literature." In a tradition in which male authors have ardently denied black literary paternity, this is a major development, one that heralds the refinement of our notion of tradition: Zora and her daughters are a tradition-within-the-tradition, a black woman's voice. — Zora Neale Hurston

Put me down easy, Janie, Ah'm a cracked plate. — Zora Neale Hurston

I do not pray ... I do not expect God to single me out and grant me advantages over my fellow men ... Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. — Zora Neale Hurston

Perhaps love is a compelling necessity imposed on man by God that has something to do with suffering — Zora Neale Hurston

I don't know any more about the future than you do. I hope that it will be full of work, because I have come to know by experience that work is the nearest thing to happiness that I can find ... I want a busy life, a just mind and a timely death. — Zora Neale Hurston

Silence is all the genius a fool has. — Zora Neale Hurston

He has only heard what I felt. — Zora Neale Hurston

Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear. — Zora Neale Hurston

God took pattern after a pine tree and built you noble. — Zora Neale Hurston

There was already something dead about him. He didn't rear back in his knees any longer. He squatted over his ankles when he walked. That stillness at the back of his neck. His prosperous-looking belly ... sagged like a load suspended from his loins. — Zora Neale Hurston

Anybody depending on somebody else's gods is depending on a fox not to eat chickens. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding. — Zora Neale Hurston

There is two things everybody got to find out for theirselves. They got to find out about love and they got to find out about living. — Zora Neale Hurston

She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief. — Zora Neale Hurston

truth is a letter from courage! — Zora Neale Hurston

Mrs. Turner was a milky sort of a woman that belonged to child-bed. Her shoulders rounded a little, and she must have been conscious of her pelvis because she kept it stuck out in front of her so she could always see it. Tea Cake made a lot of fun about Mrs. Turners shape behind her back. He claimed that she had been shaped up by a cow kicking her from behind. She was an ironing board with things throwed at it. Then that same cow took and stepped in her mouth when she was a baby and left it wide and flat with her chin and nose almost meeting. — Zora Neale Hurston

Some of dese mornin's and it won't be long, you gointuh wake up callin' me and Ah'll be gone. — Zora Neale Hurston

In this chapter, what do you find out about Janie's parents and early childhood? CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.1 — Zora Neale Hurston

So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don't tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. — Zora Neale Hurston

Once upon uh time, Ah never 'spected nothin', Tea Cake, but bein' dead from the standin' still and tryin' tuh laugh. But you come 'long and made somethin' outa me. So Ah'm thankful fuh anything we come through together." "Thanky, Ma'am. — Zora Neale Hurston

You are alive aren't you? Well, so long as you have no grave you are covered by the sky. No limit to your possibilities. The distance to heaven is the same everywhere. — Zora Neale Hurston

Times and scenes like that put Janie to thinking about the inside state of her marriage. Time came when she fought back with her tongue as best she could, but it didn't do her any good. It just made Joe do more. He wanted her submission and he'd keep on fighting until he felt he had it. So gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush. The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom again. So she put something in there to represent the spirit like a Virgin Mary image in a church. The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in. It was a place where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired. She wasn't petal-open anymore with him. — Zora Neale Hurston

Distance is the only cure for certain diseases. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

Want won't kill you half as quick as worry will. — Zora Neale Hurston

At the bottom in the gut of jazz if you listen closely you can hear - no matter how complexly, obliquely, mysteriously stylized - somebody talking, crying, growling, singing, farting, praying, stomping, voicing in all those modes through which our bodies communicate some tale about how it feels to be here on earth or leaving, or about the sweet pain of hanging on between the coming and going. — Zora Neale Hurston

But as de old folk always say, Ah'm born but Ah ain't dead. No tellin' whut Ah'm liable tuh do yet. — Zora Neale Hurston

It looked so quiet and peaceful around. But the stillness was the sleep of swords. — Zora Neale Hurston

Gods always behave like the people who make them. — Zora Neale Hurston

It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding. — Zora Neale Hurston

Tain't no trouble tuh say whut's already so. — Zora Neale Hurston

You have no idea, sir, how difficult it is to be the victim of benevolence. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

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

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

It is a curious thing to be a woman in the Caribbean after you have been a woman in these United States. — Zora Neale Hurston

When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another. — Zora Neale Hurston

People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor. — Zora Neale Hurston

Put simply, Hurston wrote well when she was comfortable, wrote poorly when she was not. — Zora Neale Hurston

But it was night, it stayed night. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

Now, Pheoby, don't feel too mean wid de rest of 'em 'cause dey's parched up from not knowin' things. — Zora Neale Hurston

Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place. — Zora Neale Hurston

That was the rock she was battered against. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

Ah can look through muddy water and see dry land. — Zora Neale Hurston

Pheoby's hungry listening helped Janie to tell her story. — Zora Neale Hurston

Just g'wan back home and set down on yo' royal diasticutis and say nothin'. — Zora Neale Hurston

They, the men, were saving with the mind what they lost with the eye. The women took the faded shirt and muddy overalls and laid them away for remembrance. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil. — Zora Neale Hurston

Folklore is the boiled-down juice, or pot-likker, of human living. — Zora Neale Hurston

When a man keeps beating me to the draw mentally, he begins to get glamorous. — Zora Neale Hurston

The man who interprets Nature is always held in great honor. — Zora Neale Hurston

I found out too that you are bound to be jostled in "the crowded street of life." That in itself need not be dangerous unless you have the open razors of personal vanity in your pants pocket. The passers-by don't hurt you, but if you go around like that, they make you hurt yourself. — Zora Neale Hurston

She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her. — Zora Neale Hurston

I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads. — Zora Neale Hurston

They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment. — Zora Neale Hurston

Affection makes your spirit slither out from its concealing spot. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

Joe was not there waiting for her, the change — Zora Neale Hurston

Somebody got to think for women and chillun and cows. I god, they sho don't think none theirselves ... When Ah see one thing Ah understands ten. You see ten things and don't understand one. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

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! — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

It seems like the first law of Nature is that everybody likes to receive things, but nobody likes to feel grateful. — Zora Neale Hurston

Why, Tea Cake? Whut good do combin' mah hair do you? It's mah comfortable, not yourn." "It's mine too. Ah ain't been sleepin' so good for more'n uh week cause Ah been wishin' so bad tuh git mah hands in yo' hair. It's so pretty. It feels jus' lak underneath uh dove's wing next to mah face. — Zora Neale Hurston