619 Quotes by Zora Neale Hurston

She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.

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

I don't know any more about the future than you do. I hope that it will be full of work, because I have come to know by experience that work is the nearest thing to happiness that I can find. . . I want a busy life, a just mind and a timely death.

Every morning the world flung itself over and exposed the town to the sun.

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.

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

I will fight for my country, but I will not lie for her.

I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.

Now, suppose a Negro does something really magnificent, and I glory, not in the benefit to mankind, but in the fact that the doer was a Negro. Must I not also go hang my head in shame when a member of my race does something execrable? . . . The white race did not go into a laboratory and invent incandescent light. That was Edison. . . . If you are under the impression that every white man is an Edison, just look around a bit.