Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

African American folklorist, novelist, short story writer, and Civic Rights advocate (1891–1960)

Zora Neale Hurston (7 January 1891 – 28 January 1960) was an American folklorist and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, best remembered for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Alternative Names: Zora N. Hurston

From Wikidata (CC0)

"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. 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."

If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.

Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches

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

Love, I find, is like singing.

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.

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. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over.

You'se something tuh make uh man forgit to git old and forgit tuh die.

She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen.

You heard me. You ain't blind.

Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person.

I had hundreds of books under my skin already. Not selected reading, all of it. Some of it could be called trashy. I had been through Nick Carter, Horatio Alger, Bertha M. Clay and the whole slew of dime novelists in addition to some really constructive reading. I do not regret the trash. It has harmed me in no way. It was a help, because acquiring the reading habit early is the important thing. Taste and natural development will take care of the rest later on.

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.

She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.

Please God, please suh, don't let him love nobody else but me. Maybe Ah'm is uh fool, Lawd, lak dey say, but Lawd, Ah been so lonesome, and Ah been waitin', Jesus. Ah done waited uh long time.