Zora Neale Hurston
48 quotes
Biography
"Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place."
"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
"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."
"Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships."
"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."
"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."
"Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose."
"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."
"Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof."
"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."
"Ah done been in sorrow's kitchen and Ah done licked out all de pots. Ah done died in grief and been buried in de bitter waters, and Ah done rose agin from de dead lak Lazarus."
"Gods always behave like the people who make them."
"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."
"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 that sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal. 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."
"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."
"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."
"After a while she got up from where she was and went over the little garden field entire. She was seeking confirmation of the voice and vision, and everywhere she found and acknowledged answers. A personal answer for all other creations except herself. She felt an answer seeking her, but where? When? How?"
"‘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 donʼt tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.’"
"Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. 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."
"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to "jump at de sun." We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground."
"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."
"If you haven’t got it, you can’t show it. If you have got it, you can’t hide it."
"So the brother in black offers to these United States the source of courage that endures, and laughter."
"There is something about poverty that smells like death."
"It is one of the blessings of this world that few people see visions and dream dreams."