619 Quotes by Zora Neale Hurston

He had a bow-down command in his face, and every step he took made the thing more tangible.

She was a wind on the ocean. She moved men, but the helm determined the port.

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.

Something fell off the shelf inside her.

It’s a funny thing, the less people have to live for, the less nerve they have to risk losing nothing.

That which she silences or deletes, similarly, is all that her readership would draw upon to delimit or pigeonhole her life as a synecdoche of “the race problem,” an exceptional part standing for the debased whole.

The sounds lulled Janie to soft slumber and she woke up with Tea Cake combing her hair.

All these words from the seller, but not one word from the sold. The Kings and Captains whose words moved ships. But not one word from the cargo. The thoughts of the “black ivory,” the “coin of Africa,” had no market value. Africa’s ambassadors to the New World have come and worked and died, and left their spoor, but no recorded thought.

If God don’t think no mo’ ’bout ’em then Ah do, they’s a lost ball in de high grass.