"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it doesn’t make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered al over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"I love myself when I am laughing. . . and then again when I am looking mean and impressive."
— Zora Neale Hurston (I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... And Then Again: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader)

"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."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

" 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."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore"
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"It is so easy to be hopeful in the daytime when you can see the things you wish on. But it was night, it stayed night. Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands . . . They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against cruel walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"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.
"
— Zora Neale Hurston

"Those that don't got it, can't show it. Those that got it, can't hide it. "
— Zora Neale Hurston

"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. "
— Zora Neale Hurston

"Bitterness is the coward's revenge on the world for having been hurt."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"You heard me. You ain't blind."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"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 a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography)

"I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography)

"It was the meanest moment of eternity."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

""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.""
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"..she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. .. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She 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. "
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"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."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"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."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. "
— Zora Neale Hurston

"If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"Pheoby, yuh got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo' papa and yo' mama and nobody else can't tell yuh and show yuh. 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."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"I made up my mind to keep my feelings to myself since they did not seem to matter to anyone else but me."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography)

"So Janie began to think of Death. Death, that strange being with the huge square toes who lived way in the West. The great one who lived in the straight house like a platform without sides to it, and without a roof. What need has Death for a cover, and what winds can blow against him? He stands in his high house that overlooks the world. Stands watchful and motionless all day with his sword drawn back, waiting for the messenger to bid him come. Been standing there before there was a where or a when or a then. She was liable to find a feather from his wings lying in her yard any day now. She was sad and afraid too. Poor Jody! He ought not to have to wrassle in there by himself. She sen Sam in to suggest a cisit, but Jody said No. These medical doctors wuz all right with the Godly sick, but they didn't know a thing about a case like his. He'd be all right just as soon as the two-headed man found what had been buried against him. He wasn't going to die at all. That was what he thought. But Sam told her different, so she knew. And then if he hadn't the next morning she was bound to know, for people began to gather in the big yard under the palm and china-berry trees. People who would not have dared to foot the place before crept in and did not come to the house. Just squatted under the trees and waited. Rumor, that wingless bird, had shadowed over the town."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"I had hundreds of books under my skin already. Not selected reading, all of it. Some of it could be called trashy. I had been through Nick Carter, Horatio Alger, Bertha M. Clay and the whole slew of dime novelists in addition to some really constructive reading. I do not regret the trash. It has harmed me in no way. It was a help, because acquiring the reading habit early is the important thing. Taste and natural development will take care of the rest later on."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography)

"My head was full of misty fumes of doubt."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography)

"Oh to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!"
— Zora Neale Hurston

"Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. "
— Zora Neale Hurston

"Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore. "
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around. But she had been set in the market-place to sell. Been set for still bait. When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine."
— Zora Neale Hurston

"He looked like the love thoughts of women."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"one finds great comfort in good dinners"
— Zora Neale Hurston

"Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it's some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nothin' but what we see. "
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"Sometimes, I feel dicriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?"
— Zora Neale Hurston

"No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep."
— Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

"Every tub sits on its bottom."
— Zora Neale Hurston