Dust Tracks on a Road Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“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, Dust Tracks on a Road

“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

“Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“Perhaps it is just as well to be rash and foolish for a while. If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would get written at all. It might be better to ask yourself 'Why?' afterward than before. Anyway, the force of somewhere in space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“I will fight for my country, but I will not lie for her.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? The wide belt of the universe has no need for finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“People can be slave ships in shoes.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“I don't know any more about the future than you do. I hope that it will be full of work, because I have come to know by experience that work is the nearest thing to happiness that I can find. . . I want a busy life, a just mind and a timely death.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“My sense of humor will always stand in the way of my seeing myself, my family, my race or my nation as the whole intent of the universe.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“Mystery is the essence of divinity”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“My head was full of misty fumes of doubt.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“Make the attempt if you want to, but you will find that trying to go through life without friendship, is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws. The ever-sleepless sea in its bed, crying out “how long?” to Time; million-formed and never motionless flame; the contemplation of these two aspects alone, affords me sufficient food for ten spans of my expected lifetime. It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such. However, I would not, by word or deed, attempt to deprive another of the consolation it affords. It is simply not for me. Somebody else may have my rapturous glance at the archangels. The springing of the yellow line of morning out of the misty deep of dawn, is glory enough for me. I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? The wide belt of the universe has no need for finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“It seems to me to be true that heavens are placed in the sky because it is the unreachable. The unreachable and therefore the unknowable always seems divine--hence, religion. People need religion because the great masses fear life and its consequences. Its responsibilities weigh heavy. Feeling a weakness in the face of great forces, men seek an alliance with omnipotence to bolster up their feeling of weakness, even though the omnipotence they rely upon is a creature of their own minds. It gives them a feeling of security. ”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“Like the dead-seeming, cold rocks, I have memories within that came out of the material that went to make me. Time and place have had their say.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“There could be something wrong with me because I see Negroes neither better nor worse than any other race. Race pride is a luxury I cannot afford. There are too many implications bend the term. Now, suppose a Negro does something really magnificent, and I glory, not in the benefit to mankind, but the fact that the doer was a Negro. Must I not also go hang my head in shame when a member of my race does something execrable? If I glory, then the obligation is laid upon me to blush also. I do glory when a Negro does something fine, I gloat because he or she has done a fine thing, but not because he was a Negro. That is incidental and accidental. It is the human achievement which I honor. I execrate a foul act of a Negro but again not on the grounds that the doer was a Negro, but because it was foul. A member of my race just happened to be the fouler of humanity. In other words, I know that I cannot accept responsibility for thirteen million people. Every tub must sit on its own bottom regardless. So 'Race Pride' in me had to go. And anyway, why should I be proud to be Negro? Why should anyone be proud to be white? Or yellow? Or red? After all, the word 'race' is a loose classification of physical characteristics. I tells nothing about the insides of people. Pointing a achievements tells nothing either. Races have never done anything. What seems race achievement is the work of individuals. The white race did not go into a laboratory and invent incandescent light. That was Edison. The Jews did not work out Relativity. That was Einstein. The Negros did not find out the inner secrets of peanuts and sweet potatoes, nor the secret of the development of the egg. That wad Carver and Just. If you are under the impression that every white man is Edison, just look around a bit. If you have the idea that every Negro is a Carver, you had better take off plenty of time to do your searching.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“I did not know then, as I know now, that people are prone to build a statue of the kind of person it pleases them to be. And few people want to be forced to ask themselves, "What is there is no me like my statue?" The thing to do is to grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such. I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“It seemed to me that the human beings I met reacted pretty much the same to the same stimuli. Different idioms,yes. Circumstances and conditions having power to influence, yes. Inherent difference, no.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“Are you so simple as to assume that the Big Surrender banished the concept of human slavery from the earth? What is the principle of slavery? Only the literal buying and selling of human flesh on the block? That was only an outside symbol. Real slavery is couched in the desire and the efforts of any man or community to live and advance their interests at the expense of the lives and interests of others. All of the outward signs come out of that.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth the glory of change. I was, when the earth hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated in infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble in space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, every moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? The wide belt of the universe has no need for finger-rings. I am one with infinite and need no other assurance.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“I want a busy life, a just mind and a timely death.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“Our lives are so diversified, internal attitudes so varied, appearances and capabilities so different, that there is no possible classification so catholic that it will cover us all, except My people! My people!”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“I regret all of my books. It is one of the tragedies of life that one cannot have all the wisdom one is ever to possess in the beginning. Perhaps, it is just as well to be rash and foolish for a while. If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would get written at all. It might be better to ask yourself “Why?” afterwards than before. Anyway, the force from somewhere in Space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road