Quotes from Zora Neale Hurston

Man, like all the other animals, fears and is repelled by that which he does not understand, and mere difference is apt to connote something malign. --Essay What White Publishers Won't Print (Negro Digest, April 1950)

Indians don't know much uh nothin', tuh tell de truth. Else dey'd own dis country still.

The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. 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.

Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?

All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped.

The villagers said that John Redding was a queer child.

Once upon uh time, Ah never 'spected nothin', Tea Cake, but bein' dead from the standin' still and tryin' tuh augh. But you came 'long and made somethin' outa me.

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

Love is lak de sea. It's uh movie' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.

Ah was wid dem white chillun so much till Ah didn't know Ah wuzn't white till Ah was round six years old.

Put dat in yo' pipe and smoke it.

Once Africans could all fly because they never ate salt. Many of them were brought to Jamaica to be slaves, but they never were slaves. They flew back to Africa. Those who ate salt had to stay in Jamaica and be slaves, because they were too heavy to fly.

Whereupon Jim flopped into a chair and held forth at great length on the necessity of keeping wives in their places; to wit: speechless and expressionless in the presence of their lords and masters and cited several instances where men had met their downfall and utter ruin by ill advisedly permitting their wives to air their ignorance by talking. His audience, composed entirely of males, agreed with him. Wife-beaters are numberous in Poplar Street.

She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was.

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.

Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant. It was just so. Janie felt glad of the thought, for then it wouldn't seem so destructive and mouldy. She wouldn't be lonely anymore

Aw, don't make God look so foolish, findin' fault wid everything He made

Maybe nothin' ain't real sho' nuff. Maybe 'taint no world. No elements, no nothin'. Maybe wese jus' somewhere in God's mind. But when he wiggled his tired toes the world thudded and throbbed before him.

Spring time in Florida is not a matter of peeping violets or bursting buds merely. It is a riot of color, in nature—glistening green leaves, pink, blue, purple, yellow blossoms that fairly stagger the visitor from the north.

I began to worry a bit. Ella kept on hurling slurs. So I said, Come on, Big Sweet, we got to go to home. Nope, Ah ain't got to do nothin' but die and stay black.

dey's parched up from not knowin' things. Dem meatskins is got tuh rattle tuh make out they's alive. Let 'em consolate theyselves wid talk. 'Course, talkin' don't amount tuh uh hill uh beans when yuh can't do nothin' else. And listenin' tuh dat kind uh talk is jus' lak openin' yo' mouth and lettin' de moon shine down yo' throat.

Brother Anansi, the Spider, that great cultural hero of West Africa who is personated in Haiti by Ti Malice and in the United States by Brer Rabbit.

This freedom is a funny thing,' he told them. 'It ain't something permanent like rocks and hills. It's like manna; you just got to keep on gathering it fresh every day. If you don't, one day you're going to find you ain't got none no more.

He had found out that no man may make another free. Freedom was something internal. The outside signs were just signs and symbols of the man inside. All you could do was to give the opportunity for freedom and the man himself must make his own emancipation.