Quotes from Zora Neale Hurston

Sorrow dogged by sorrow is in mah heart.

Hurrying, dragging, falling, crying, calling out names hopefully and hopelessly.

Common danger made common friends. Nothing sought a conquest over the other.

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

Then she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see

The town had a basketful of feelings good and bad about Joe's positions and possessions, but none had the temerity to challenge him. They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.

Janie 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.

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

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.

They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty.

Death had found them watching, trying to see beyond seeing.

Kossula was no longer on the porch with me. He was squatting about that fire in Dahomey. His face was twitching in abysmal pain. It was a horror mask. He had forgotten that I was there. He was thinking aloud and gazing into the dead faces in the smoke. His agony was so acute that he became inarticulate. He never noticed my preparation to leave him. So I slipped away as quietly as possible and left him with his smoke pictures.

They, the men, were saving with the mind what they lost with the eye.

Well, Ah see Mouth-Almighty is still sittin' in de same place. And Ah reckon they got me up in they mouth now.

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.

He was a glance from God

Things lak dat got uh whole lot tuh do wid convenience, but it ain't got nothin' tuh do wid love.

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, 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. Then they act and do things accordingly.

You cannot avoid hearing drums in Haiti.

Perhaps it is natural for the god of the poor to be akin to the god of the dead, for there is something about poverty that smells of death

You'se something tuh make uh man forgit tuh git old and forgit tuh die.

Thankee Jesus! Someone come ast about Cudjo! I want tellee someobody who I is, so maybe dey go in the Afficky soil some day and callee my name and somebody say, 'Yeah, I know Kossula.

A little war of defense for helpless things was going on inside her. People ought to have some regard for helpless things. She wanted to fight about it.

Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don't think none theirselves. Ah knows a few things, and womenfolks thinks sometimes too! Aw naw they don't. They just think they's thinkin'. When Ah see one thing Ah understands ten. You see ten things and don't understand one.