Quotes from Zora Neale Hurston

Lawd, look at Tookie switchin' it and lookin' back at it! She's done gone crazy thru de hips.

Dat mule is liable tuh be dead befo' de week is out. You won't git no work outa him. Didn't buy 'im fuh no work. I god, Ah bought dat varmint tuh let 'im rest. You didn't have gumption enough tuh do it. A respectful silence fell on the place. Sam looked at Joe and said, Dat's a new idea 'bout varmints, Mayor Starks. But Ah laks it mah ownself. It's uh noble thing you done. Everybody agreed with that.

Tea Cake love me in blue, so Ah wears it. Jody ain't never in his life picked out no color for me.

Không Ä'au Ä'á»›n nào lá»›n b?ng vi?c ph?i mang trong mình má»™t câu chuy?n không ???c k? ra.

That was the mystery and the mysteries are the chores of gods.

The one who makes the idols never worships them, however tenderly he might have molded the clay. You cannot have knowledge and worship at the same time.

While these characters split along the lines of gender in their thinking about masculinity, "Spunk" presents conflicting views held by the men within the Eatonville community.

Le vent revint en triple furie, et une bonne fois pour toutes éteignit les lanternes. Ils restèrent assis en compagnie de tant d'autres comme eux dans d'autres baraquements, leurs yeux s'éreintant contre les murs rudimentaires, leur âme cherchant à savoir si Son intention était de mesurer leur piètre puissance à l'aune de la Sienne. Tous semblaient fixer l'obscur, mais leurs yeux dardaient sur Dieu.

Next month and next year were other times. No need to mix them up with the present.

If dat wuz mah wife, said Walter Thomas, Ah'd kill her cemetery dead.

The will to make life beautiful was strong.

The theory behind our [Negro] tactics: The white man is always trying to know into somebody else's business. All right, I'll set something outside the door of my mind for him to play with and handle. He can read my writing but he sho' can't read my mind. I'll put this play to in his hand, and he will seize it and go away. Then I'll say my say and sing my song.

But if I should live to be very old, I have laid plans for that so that it will not be too tiresome. So far, I have never used coffee, liquor, nor any form of stimulant. When I get old, and my joints and bones tell me about it, I can sit around and write for myself, if for nobody else, and read slowly and carefully the mysticism of the East, and re-read Spinoza with love and care. All the while my days can be a succession of coffee cups. Then

Don't make God look so foolish, finding fault with everything he made.

Ah wanted to preach a great sermon about colored women sittin' on high, but they wasn't no pulpit for me.

There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still gulf of formless feeling untouched by thought

All night now the jooks clanged and clamored. Pianos living three lifetimes in one. Blues made and used right on the spot. Dancing, fighting, singing, crying, laughing, winning and losing love every hour. Work all day for money, fight all night for love. The rich black earth clinging to bodies and biting the skin like ants.

An envious heart makes a treacherous ear. They done 'heard' bout just what they hope done happened.

It gave me something to feel about.

Looka heah, Tea Cake, if you ever go off from me and have a good time lak dat and then come back heah tellin' me how nice Ah is, Ah specks tuh kill yuh dead. You heah me?

The brother in black puts a laugh in every vacant place in his mind. His laugh has a hundred meanings. It may mean amusement, anger, grief, bewilderment, chagrin, curiosity, simple pleasure, or any other of the known or undefined emotions.

So Mrs. Turner frowned most of the time. She had so much to disapprove of.

Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what I felt. He is far away and I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us. He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored.

How could the recipient of two Guggenheims and the author of four novels, a dozen short stories, two musicals, two books on black mythology, dozens of essays, and a prizewinning autobiography virtually 'disappear' from her readership for three full decades?