Quotes from Zora Neale Hurston

Ah jus' know dat God snatched me out de fire through you. And Ah loves yuh and feel glad.

Lot's wife lookee back and turn to a pillar of salt and she be dere till Judgment Day. Poor Cudjo, I no lookee back. I pressee forward.

Everytime Ah see uh patch uh roses uh somethin' over sportin' they selves makin' out they pretty, Ah tell 'em 'Ah want yuh tuh see mah Janie sometime.' You must let de flowers see yuh sometimes, heah, Janie?

There are years that ask questions and years that answer. Janie had had no chance to know things, so she had to ask. Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the sun the day? In

If they wants to see and know, why they don't come kiss and be kissed? Ah could then sit down and tell 'em things. Ah been a delegate to de big 'ssociation of life. Yessuh! De Grand Lodge, de big convention of livin' is just where Ah been dis year and a half y'all ain't seen me.

the fiend from hell specially sent to lovers arrived at Janie's ear. Doubt.

Joe was not there waiting for her, the change

Unless you see de fur, a mink skin ain't no different from a coon hide.

You can't beat nobody down so low till you can rob 'em of they will.

Ships at a distance have every man's wish onboard.

I god, Ah can't see what uh woman uh yo' stability would want tuh be treasurin' all dat gum-grease from folks dat don't even own de house dey sleep in. 'Tain't no earthly use. They's jus' some puny humans playin' round de toes uh Time.

Ah can look through muddy water and see dry land.

Time makes everything old so the kissing, young darkness became a monstropolous old thing while Janie talked.

That was the rock she was battered against.

While I was in the research field in 1929, the idea of Jonah's Gourd Vine came to me. I had written a few short stories, but the idea of attempting a book seemed so big that I gazed at it in the quiet of the night, but hid it away from even myself in daylight.

She was a wind on the ocean. She moved men, but the helm determined the port.

in de woods." "It is a whole heap littler than Ah thought." Janie admitted her

Janie had robbed him of his illusion of irresistible maleness that all men cherish, which was terrible.

As author, she functions as "a midwife participating in the birth of a body of folklore,…the first wondering contacts with natural law." The myths she describes so accurately are in fact "alternative modes for perceiving reality," and never just condescending depictions of the quaint.

We sat up in the trees and disputed about what the end of the world would be like when we got there—whether it was sort of tucked under like the hem of a dress, or just was a sharp drop off into nothingness.

Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear

If it wuzn't for so many black folks it wouldn't be no race problem. De white folks would take us in wid dem. De black ones is holdin' us back.

Here it is just like it is in Egypt—the scared people do all of the biggest talk.

Ah'm uh man even if Ah is de Mayor. But de mayor's wife is somethin' different again.