Top 400 Zora Neale Hurston Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Before the week was over he had whipped Janie. Not because her behavior justified his jealousy, but it relieved that awful fear inside him. Being able to whip her reassured him in possession.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

252. “The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

253. “There is something about poverty that smells like death.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

254. “Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

255. “She must talk to a man who was ten immensities away.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

256. “Pheoby’s hungry listening helped Janie to tell her story.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

257. “Everytime Ah see uh patch uh roses uh somethin’ oversportin’ theyselves makin’ out they pretty, Ah tell ‘em ‘Ah want yuh tuh see mah Janie sometime.’ You must let de flowers see yuh sometimes, heah, Janie?”

— Zora Neale Hurston

258. “Now they got to look into me loving Tea Cake and see whether it was done right or not! They don’t know if life is a mess of corn-meal dumplings, and if love is a bed-quilt!”

— Zora Neale Hurston

259. “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.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

260. “Now, women forget all the things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

261. “She sent her face to Joe’s funeral, and herself went rollicking with the springtime across the world.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

262. “Common danger made common friends.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

263. “He was a glance from God.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

264. “The whole matter revolves around the self-respect of my people. How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody toassociate with me who does not wish me near them?”

— Zora Neale Hurston

265. “Besides she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn’t represent a thing she wanted to know about.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

266. “They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

267. “To a haughty belly, kindness is hard to swallow and harder to digest.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

268. “A great state is a well-blended mash of something of all the people and all of none of the people. The liquor of statecraft is distilled from the mash you got.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

269. “When a man keeps beating me to the draw mentally, he begins to get glamorous.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

270. “You got me in de go-long.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

271. “Besides she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn’t represent a thing she wanted to know about. She had already experienced them through Logan and Joe. She felt like slapping some of them for sitting around grinning at her like a pack of cheesy cats, trying to make out they looked like love.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

272. “So the brother in black offers to these United States the source of courage that endures, and laughter.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

273. “They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without master...”

— Zora Neale Hurston

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

— Zora Neale Hurston

275. “Death had found them watching, trying to see beyond seeing.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

276. “When Janie looked out of her door she saw the drifting mists gathered in the west – that cloud field of the sky – to arm themselves with thunders and march forth against the world. Louder and higher and lower and wider the sound and motion spread, mounting, sinking, darking.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

277. “It is easy to be hopeful in the day when you can see the things you wish on.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

278. “And listenin’ tuh dat kind uh talk is jus’ lak openin’ yo’ mouth and lettin’ de moon shine down yo’ throat.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

279. “At the bottom in the gut of jazz if you listen closely you can hear – no matter how complexly, obliquely, mysteriously stylized – somebody talking, crying, growling, singing, farting, praying, stomping, voicing in all those modes through which our bodies communicate some tale about how it feels to be here on earth or leaving, or about the sweet pain of hanging on between the coming and going.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

280. “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. So when speakers stood up when the occasion demanded and said “Our beloved Mayor,” it was one of those statements that everybody says but nobody actually believes like “God is everywhere.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

281. “She tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair. The weight, the length, the glory was there.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

282. “Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood. Mrs.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

283. “But as de old folk always say, Ah’m born but Ah ain’t dead. No tellin’ whut Ah’m liable tuh do yet.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

284. “Cudjo meetee de people at de gate and tells dem, “You see de rattlesnake in de woods?” Dey say, “Yeah.” I say “If you bother wid him, he bite you. If you know de snake killee you, why you bother wid him? Same way wid my boys, you unnerstand me. If you leave my boys alone, dey not bother nobody!”

— Zora Neale Hurston

285. “We must learn to be honest with ourselves, and know our shortcomings. We will acquire cohesion but we will pay dearly for being a slow pupil.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

286. “De man dat built things oughta boss it. Let colored folks build things too if dey wants to crow over somethin’.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

287. “Ah’m uh man even if Ah is de Mayor. But de mayor’s wife is somethin’ different again.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

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

— Zora Neale Hurston

289. “He was the average mortal. It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

290. “The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in. It was a place where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

291. “But for the national welfare, it is urgent to realize that the minorities do think, and think about something other than the race problem.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

292. “It costs you something to do good!”

— Zora Neale Hurston

293. “She had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what it was. 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.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

294. “De first street lamp in uh colored town. Lift yo’ eyes and gaze on it. And when Ah touch de match tuh dat lamp-wick let de light penetrate inside of yuh, and let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

295. “She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. 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.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

296. “They passed a dead man in a sitting position on a hummock, entirely surrounded by wild animals and snakes. Common danger made common friends. Nothing sought a conquest over the other.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

297. “It is hard to apply oneself to study when there is no money to pay for food and lodging. I almost never explain these things when folks are asking me why I don’t do this or that.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

298. “Long before the year was up, Janie noticed that her husband had stopped talkin to he rin rhymes.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

299. “I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

300. “It seems to me that trying to live without friends 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