Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

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

Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.

Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.

When Janie looked out of her door she saw the drifting mists gathered in the west -- that cloud field of the sky -- to arm themselves with thunders and march forth against the world. Louder and higher and lower and wider the sound and motion spread, mounting, sinking, darking.

All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.

The Haitian people are gentle and lovable except for their enormous and unconscious cruelty.

I will fight for my country, but I will not lie for her.

I am the kind of a woman that likes to move on mentally from point to point, and I like for my man to be there way ahead of me. Then if he is strong and honest, it goes on from there. Good looks are not essential, just extra added attraction.

No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.

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

She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.

Don't you love nobody better'n you do yo'self. Do, you'll be dying befo' yo' time is out.

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.

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

Anybody depending on somebody else's gods is depending on a fox not to eat chickens.

She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight.

I was born in a Negro town.

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

Ethical and cultural desegregation. It is a contradiction in terms to scream race pride and equality while at the same time spurning Negro teachers and self-association.

The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.