I Am Zora Neale Quotes & Sayings

You switches a mean fanny round in a kitchen. — Zora Neale Hurston

My head was full of misty fumes of doubt. — Zora Neale Hurston

Janie starched and ironed her face and came set in the funeral behind her veil. It was like a wall of stone and steel. The funeral was going on outside. All things concerning death and burial were said and done. Finish. End. Never-more. Darkness. Deep hole. Dissolution. Eternity. Weeping and wailing outside. Inside the expensive black folds were resurrection and life. — Zora Neale Hurston

We must learn to be honest with ourselves, and know our shortcomings. We will acquire cohesion but we will pay dearly for being a slow pupil. — Zora Neale Hurston

Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant. It was just so. Janie felt glad of the thought, for then it wouldn't seem so destructive and mouldy. She wouldn't be lonely anymore. — Zora Neale Hurston

She must talk to a man who was ten immensities away. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

Africa has her mouth on Moses. — Zora Neale Hurston

Uh woman by herself is uh pitiful thing, she was told over and again. — 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

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

A little seed of fear was growing into a tree. — Zora Neale Hurston

Besides she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn't represent a thing she wanted to know about. — 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

You got de keys to de kingdom. — Zora Neale Hurston

The inference is, that God has restated the superiority of the West. God always does like that when a thousand white people surround one dark one. Dark people are always "bad" when they do not admit the Divine Plan like that. A certain Javanese man who sticks up for Indonesian Independence is very lowdown by the papers, and suspected of being a Japanese puppet. — 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

She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

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

Perhaps I am just a coward who loves to laugh at life better than I do cry with it. But when I do get to crying, boy, I can roll a mean tear. — Zora Neale Hurston

The mediocre have no importance except through appointment. They feel invaded and defeated by the presence of creative folk among them. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell. — Zora Neale Hurston

I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background ... Beside the waters of the Hudson" I feel my race. Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again." How It Feels to Be Colored Me — Zora Neale Hurston

The others forgot the work and the weather watching them throw. It was art. A thousand dollars a throw in Madison Square Garden wouldn't have gotten any more breathless suspense. It would have just been more people holding in. — Zora Neale Hurston

I am just getting into Zora Neale Hurston, who is possibly a much better writer than the critics and rivals who tried to erase her from history, resulting in a life in which she worked as a maid and died in a welfare nursing home. She's clever. She does something modern to the sentence. — Rachel Kushner

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

Zora Neale Hurston's "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background. — Claudia Rankine

Such as I am, I am a precious gift. — Zora Neale Hurston

I am the kind of a woman that likes to move on mentally from point to point, and I like for my man to be there way ahead of me. Then if he is strong and honest, it goes on from there. Good looks are not essential, just extra added attraction. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

What does a victorious or defeated black woman's body in a historically white space look like? Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora Neale Hurston's "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background." This appropriated line, stenciled on canvas by Glenn Ligon, who used plastic letter stencils, smudging oil sticks, and graphite to transform the words into abstractions, seemed to be ad copy for some aspect of life for all black bodies. — Claudia Rankine

I love myself when I am laughing ... and then again when I am looking mean and impressive. — Zora Neale Hurston

I love myself when I am laughing. — 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

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

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

Faith hasn't got no eyes, but she's long-legged. — Zora Neale Hurston

We, too, consider machine gun bullets good laxatives for heathens who get constipated with toxic ideas about a country of their own. If the patient dies from the treatment, it was not because the medicine was not good. — 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

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 — Zora Neale Hurston

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

Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

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

Women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. They then act and do things accordingly. — Zora Neale Hurston

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston said fear is the greatest emotion and I said, 'No my dear sister.' Fear will make us move to save our own skins. Love also makes us save ourselves, but it will make us move to save others as well. — Sonia Sanchez

you can't beat me and my prayers! — Zora Neale Hurston

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

Naw! Mah own mind had tuh be squeezed and crowded out tuh make room for yours in me. — Zora Neale Hurston

That was the rock she was battered against. — 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

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. — Zora Neale Hurston

Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard. She had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously. How? Why? It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? This singing she heard that had nothing to do with her ears. — Zora Neale Hurston

Janie, Ah hope God may kill me, if Ah'm lyin'. Nobody else on earth kin hold uh candle tuh you, baby. You got de keys to de kingdom. — 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

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. — Zora Neale Hurston