Quotes from Zora Neale Hurston

Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural.

People can be slave-ships in shoes.

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

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

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

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.

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 sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning.

Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again.

Gods always behave like the people who make them.

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.

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.

They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.

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.

Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person.

Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them.

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.

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

I love myself when I am laughing.

I do not weep at the world I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Don't you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it's in the sea, and it's homesick, and bound to make its way home someday.

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

It is easy to be hopeful in the day when you can see the things you wish on.

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.