619 Quotes by Zora Neale Hurston

Whole nations are transported, exterminated, their name to be forgotten, except in the annual festival of their conquerors, when sycophants call the names of the vanquished countries to the remembrance of the victors.

He has only heard what I felt.

If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.

Look lak we done run our conversation from grass roots tuh pine trees.

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.

No, I do not weep at the world. I'm too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.

I am striving desperately for a toe-hold on the world.

Man, like all the other animals, fears and is repelled by that which he does not understand, and mere difference is apt to connote something malign. --Essay, "What White Publishers Won't Print" (Negro Digest, April 1950)