Quotes About Struggle

While I was in the research field in 1929, the idea of Jonah's Gourd Vine came to me. I had written a few short stories, but the idea of attempting a book seemed so big that I gazed at it in the quiet of the night, but hid it away from even myself in daylight.

If it wuzn't for so many black folks it wouldn't be no race problem. De white folks would take us in wid dem. De black ones is holdin' us back.

The woman took the faded shirt and muddy overalls and laid them away from remembrance. It was a weapon against her strength and if it turned out of no significance, still it was a hope that she might fall to their level some day.

Ah can't die easy thinkin' maybe de menfolks white or black is makin' a spit cup outa you: have some sympathy fuh me. Put me down easy, Janie, Ah'ma cracked plate.

They came in wagons [...] People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor.

Miserable, sullen men, black and white under guard had to keep on searching for bodies and digging graves. A huge ditch was dug across the white cemetery and a big ditch was opened across the black graveyard. Plenty

It's bad to have some power, but not enough.

Dat's de reason de sister in black works harder than anybody else in the world. De white man tells de n****r to work and he takes and tells his wife.

Ships at a distance have every mans' wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, ever landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Maybe he ain't nothin', she cautioned herself, but he is something in my mouth. He's got tuh be else Ah ain't got nothin' tuh live for. Ah'll lie and say he is. If Ah don't, life won't be nothin' but uh store and uh house.

If Wright, Ellison, Brown, and Hurston were engaged in a battle over ideal fictional modes with which to represent the Negro, clearly Hurston lost the battle. But not the war.

Her voice began snagging on the prongs of her feelings.

the first leg of their journey from humanity to cattle; with sorting and feeding and starvation and suffocation and pestilence and death; with slave ship stenches and mutinies of crew and cargo; with the jettying of cargoes before the guns of British cruisers; with auction blocks and sales and profits and losses

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.

But mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods—come and gone with the sun. She got nothing from Jody except what money could buy, and she was giving away what she didn't value.

A woman robbed of her love is more terrible than an army with banners.

There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The soul lives in a sickly air. People can be slave-ships in shoes. This

There was no doubt that the town respected him and even admired him in a way. But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate.

They fought and somehow he managed to bite Tea Cake high up on his cheek-bone once.

But mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods--come and gone with the sun. She got nothing from Jody except what money could buy, and she was giving away what she didn't value.

What would slaves want to be free for anyway? They are being fed and taken care of. What more could they want?

There is something about poverty that smells like death.

The devouring force of the future leered at him at unexpected moments. Then too his daily self seemed to be wearing thin, and the past seeped thru and mastered him for increasingly longer periods.

You know they say a white man git in some kind of trouble, he'll fret and fret until he kill hisself. A n****r git into trouble, he'll fret for a while, then g'wan to sleep.