Quotes from Zora Neale Hurston

And the lonesomeness in the sparks make 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.

The room inside looked like the mouth of an alligator—gaped wide open to swallow something down.

comfort for herself. Yes, she would love Logan after they were married. She could see no way for it to come about, but Nanny and the old folks had said it, so it must be so. Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what

He ain't kissin' yo' mouf when he carry on over yuh lak dat. He's kissin' yo' foot and 'tain't in uh man tuh kiss foot long. Mouf kissin' is on uh equal and dat's natural but when dey got to bow down tuh love, dey soon straightens up.

Something fell off the shelf inside her

Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play.

There was some more good-natured laughter at the expense of women.

But we see something else: the nobility of a soul that has suffered to the point almost of erasure, and still it struggles to be whole, present, giving. Growing in love, deepening in understanding. Cudjo's wisdom becomes so apparent, toward the end of his life, that neighbors ask him to speak to them in parables. Which he does. Offering peace.

he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon.

De girl baby ain't born and her mama is dead, dat can git me tuh spend our money on her. Ah told yo' before dat you got de keys tuh de kingdom. You can depend on dat.

But nothin' can stop you from wishin'.

You won't git far and you won't be long, when dat big gut reach over and grab dat little one

For what can excuse a man in the eyes of other men for lack of strength?

It connected itself with other vaguely felt matters that had struck her outside observation and buried themselves in her flesh.

Now, Pheoby, don't feel too mean wid de rest of 'em 'cause dey's parched up from not knowin' things.

Jeff Bruce threw in. "Speakin' of winds, he's de wind and

The morning road air was like a new dress. That made her feel the apron tied around her waist. She untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the road and walked on

The wind through the open windows had broomed out all the fetid feeling of absence and nothingness.

God was grumbling his thunder and playing the zig-zag lightning thru his fingers.

It was an innocent question, made reasonable by the body of confused and often contradictory rumors that make Zora Neale Hurston's own legend as richly curious and as dense as are the black myths she did so much to preserve in her classic anthropological works, Mules and Men and Tell My Horse, and in her fiction.

see, it was nice. The fact that the thought

Hurston embodied a more or less harmonious but nevertheless problematic unity of opposites.

The deeply satisfying aspect of the rediscovery of Zora Neale Hurston is that black women generated it primarily to establish a maternal literary ancestry.

protection, and everybody got tuh tip dey hat