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Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

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Famous Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

“So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time. But when the pollen again gilded the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody had ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said, 'Ah hope you fall on soft ground,' because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She 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. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman.”

LiteratureFictionZora Neale HurstonTheir Eyes Were Watching God
Book:Their Eyes Were Watching God
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“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me. But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall In company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small, things priceless and worthless. A first water diamond, an empty spool bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. in your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held so much like the jumble in the bags could they be emptied that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place, who knows?”

PridePrejudiceSanguine
Book:How it Feels to be Colored Me
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“You all talk like somebody else made these laws and Pharaoh don't know nothing about 'em. He makes 'em his own self and he's glad when we come tell him they hurt. Why, that's a whole lot of pleasure to him, to be making up laws all the time and to have a crowd like us around handy to pass all his mean ones on. Why, he's got a law about everything under the sun! Next thing you know, he'll be saying cats can't have kittens. He figures that it makes a big man out of him to be passing and passing laws and rules. He thinks that makes him look more like a king.”

MosesPharaoh
Book:Moses, Man of the Mountain
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“Oh, dey put me under arrest one day for vacancy in Bartow. When de judge found out Ah had a job of work. He took and searched me and when he found out Ah had a deck of cards on me, he charged me wid totin' concealed cards, and attempt to gamble, and gimme three months. Then dey made out another charge 'ginst me. 'Cused me of highway shufflin', and attempt to gamble. You know dese white folks sho hates tuh turn a n****r loose, if every dey git dey hands on 'im.”

RaceRacismPoliceAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsArrests
Book:Mules and Men
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“If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would get written at all. It might be better to ask yourself 'Why?”'afterwards than before There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.”

IfsBookStoriesMightAsksWiseWrittenAgonyUntold Stories
Book:I Love Myself when I Am Laughing ... and Then Again when I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader
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“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.”

WayStatesFactsMotherSidesUnitedUnited StatesCircumstancesOffersChiefsAfrican AmericanIndianNativeGrandfatherNative AmericanIndian Chief
Book:I Love Myself when I Am Laughing ... and Then Again when I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader
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“It seems like the first law of Nature is that everybody likes to receive things, but nobody likes to feel grateful.”

FeelsFirstsSeemsLawGratitudeGratefulLikesLaws Of Nature
Book:Zora Neale Hurston: Novels and Stories: Jonah's Gourd Vine / Their Eyes Were Watching God / Moses, Man of the Mountain / Seraph on the Suwanee / Selected Stories
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“Justice, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.”

EyeBeautifulJusticeBeautySubjectiveUglinessLiberatingInner BeautyTrue BeautyBeholderBeing BeautifulI Love MyselfBeautiful YouYou Are BeautifulBeautiful HeartBeauty Of The WorldEye Of The BeholderPhysical BeautyYour BeautifulFemale BeautyBeautiful SoulPiggySelf LovingSkin DeepBeauty Is Skin DeepBeautiful EyesBeautiful BodyBeautiful InsideBeauty Is In The Eye Of The BeholderBeing PrettyBeauty Is Only Skin DeepEyes And BeautyMakeup And BeautyUgly PeopleInspirational BeautyBeauty WithinAttractive WomanStrength And BeautyBeautiful ObjectsBeauty Inside AndBeauty Skin DeepBeauty On The InsideDefinition Of BeautyOuter BeautyEssence Of BeautyOutward BeautyStandards Of BeautyBeauty MakeupYour PrettyEye MakeupPerception Of BeautyUgly Man
Book:Dust tracks on a road
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“That is the way with people ... If they do you wrong, they invent a bad name for you, a good name for their acts and then destroy you in the name of virtue.”

PeopleIfsWayNamesVirtuePrejudice
Book:Zora Neale Hurston: Novels and Stories: Jonah's Gourd Vine / Their Eyes Were Watching God / Moses, Man of the Mountain / Seraph on the Suwanee / Selected Stories
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“Grown people know that they do not always know the why of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof. Hence the irritation they show when children keep on demanding to know if a thing is so and how the grown folks got the proof of it. It is so troublesome because it is disturbing to the pigeonhole way of life.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsWayChildrenShowsFolksProofDisturbingTroublesomeIrritation
Book:Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography
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