Zora Neale Hurston

She knew things that nobody had ever told her... She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pastor of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one every sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making.

She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.

There is two things everybody got to find out for theirselves. They got to find out about love and they got to find out about living.

Bitterness is the coward's revenge on the world for having been hurt.

The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul.

The morning 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, picking flowers and making a bouquet… From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything.

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.

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.

No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.

it seems that tears and laughter, love and hate, make up the sum of life!

Half Gods are worshipped with wine and Flowers. Real Gods require Blood.

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

When the people sat around on the porch and passed around the pictures of their thoughts for the others to look at and see, it was nice. The fact that the thought pictures were always crayon enlargements of life made it even nicer to listen to.

Then you must tell 'em dat love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.

So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time. But when the pollen again gilded the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. 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. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman.