619 Quotes by Zora Neale Hurston

She left the porch pelting her back with unasked questions. They hoped the answers were cruel and strange.

Ah never married her for nothin’ lak dat. She’s uh woman and her place is in de home.” Janie made her face laugh after a short pause, but it wasn’t too easy. She had never thought of making a speech, and didn’t know if she cared to make one at all. It must have been the way Joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything one way or another that took the bloom off of things. But anyway, she went down the road behind him that night feeling cold.

Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think.

Lot’s wife lookee back and turn to a pillar of salt and she be dere till Judgment Day. Poor Cudjo, I no lookee back. I pressee forward.

She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels.

Common danger made common friends. Nothing sought a conquest over the other.

A man is up against a hard game when he must die to beat it.

He figures that it makes a big man out of him to be passing and passing laws and rules. He thinks that makes him look more like a king. Long time ago he done passed all the laws that could do anybody good. So now he sits up and studies up laws to do hurt and harm, and we’re the only folks in Egypt he got the nerve to put ’em on. He aims to keep us down so he’ll always have somebody to wipe his feet on. He brags that him and the Egyptian nation is eating high on the hog now.

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.