Top 400 Zora Neale Hurston Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “When I pitched headforemost into the world I landed in the crib of Negroism.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

152. “A little war of defense for helpless things was going on inside her. People ought to have some regard for helpless things. She wanted to fight about it.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

153. “Let the sun go down on you like King Harold at the battle of Hastings – fighting gloriously. Maybe a loser but what a loser! Greater in defeat than the conqueror. Certainly not a coward that rusted out lurking in his tent.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

154. “Put me down easy, Janie, Ah’m a cracked plate.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

155. “Rumor, that wingless bird, had shadowed over the town.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

156. “If it was so honorable and glorious to be black, why was it the yellow-skinned people among us had so much prestige?”

— Zora Neale Hurston

157. “People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

158. “He had a bow-down command in his face, and every step he took made the thing more tangible.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

159. “Janie full of that oldest human longing – self-revelation.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

160. “As soon as Tea Cake went out pushing wind in front of him, he saw that the wind and water had given life to lots of things that folks think of as dead and given death to so much that had been living things. Water everywhere. Stray fish swimming in the yard. Three.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

161. “It was just a handle to wind up the tongue with.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

162. “She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

163. “Janie stood where he left her for unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

164. “Magic is older than writing. So nobody knows how it started.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

165. “Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times. So they chewed up the back parts of their minds and swallowed with relish. They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

166. “Some of dese mornin’s and it won’t be long, you gointuh wake up callin’ me and Ah’ll be gone.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

167. “There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

168. “Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

169. “But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

170. “The room inside looked like the mouth of an alligator – gaped wide open to swallow something down.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

171. “Anybody depending on somebody else’s gods is depending on a fox not to eat chickens.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

172. “Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

173. “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

174. “Ah never married her for nothin’ lak dat. She’s uh woman and her place is in de home.” Janie made her face laugh after a short pause, but it wasn’t too easy. She had never thought of making a speech, and didn’t know if she cared to make one at all. It must have been the way Joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything one way or another that took the bloom off of things. But anyway, she went down the road behind him that night feeling cold.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

175. “She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love. Most humans didn’t love one another nohow, and this mislove was so strong that even common blood couldn’t overcome it all the time.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

176. “The icy sword of the square-toed one had cut off his breath and left his hands in a pose of agonizing protest.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

177. “Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

178. “Some people could look at a mud-puddle and see an ocean with ships. But Nanny belonged to that other kind that loved to deal in scraps.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

179. “Life, inexhaustible, goes on. And we do too. Carrying our wounds and our medicines as we go. Ours is an amazing, a spectacular, journey in the Americas. It is so remarkable one can only be thankful for it, bizarre as that may sound. Perhaps our planet is for learning to appreciate the extraordinary wonder of life that surrounds even our suffering, and to say Yes, if through the thickest of tears.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

180. “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

181. “Most things are born in the mothering darkness and most things die. Darkness is the womb of creation, my boy. But the sun with his seven horns of flame is the father of life.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

182. “The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

183. “The sun had become a light yellow yolk and was walking with red legs across the sky.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

184. “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.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

185. “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

186. “My head was full of misty fumes of doubt.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

187. “A man is up against a hard game when he must die to beat it.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

188. “It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

189. “She couldn’t make him look just like any other man to her. He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom – a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung above him. He was a glance from God.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

190. “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.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

191. “Ah jus’ know dat God snatched me out de fire through you. And Ah loves yuh and feel glad.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

192. “All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

193. “She knew things that nobody had ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said, “Ah hope you fall on soft ground,” because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

194. “Dis ain’t no business proposition, and no race after property and titles. Dis is uh love game. Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

195. “Things packed up and put away in parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them. She.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

196. “Well, Ah see Mouth-Almighty is still sittin’ in de same place. And Ah reckon they got me up in they mouth now.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

197. “You got de keys to de kingdom.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

198. “It was bad enough for white people, but when one of your own color could be so different it put you on a wonder. It was like seeing your sister turn into a ’gator. A familiar strangeness. You keep seeing your sister in the ’gator and the ’gator in your sister, and you’d rather not.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

199. “Tell me, and then again show me, so I can know.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

200. “I god, Ah can’t see what uh woman uh yo’ stability would want tuh be treasurin’ all dat gum-grease from folks dat don’t even own de house dey sleep in. ‘Tain’t no earthly use. They’s jus’ some puny humans playin’ round de toes uh Time.”

— Zora Neale Hurston