619 Quotes by Zora Neale Hurston

She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage!

Don’t you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it’s in the sea, and it’s homesick, and bound to make its way home someday.

Well, if yo’ mind is already made up, ’tain’t nothin’ nobody kin do. But you’se takin’ uh awful chance.” “No mo’ than Ah took befo’ and no mo’ than anybody else takes when dey gits married. It always changes folks, and sometimes it brings out dirt and meanness dat even de person didn’t know they had in ’em theyselves.

Put simply, Hurston wrote well when she was comfortable, wrote poorly when she was not.

Janie stood where he left her for unmeasured time and thought. 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.

Long before the year was up, Janie noticed that her husband had stopped talkin to he rin rhymes.

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

The room inside looked like the mouth of an alligator – gaped wide open to swallow something down.

He had given Israel back the notes to songs. The words would be according to their own dreams, but they would sing. They had songs and singers. They might not be absolutely free inside, but anyway he had taken from them the sorrow of serving without will, and had given them the strife of freedom. He had called to their memories the forgotten words of love and family. They had the blessing of being responsible for their own.