Zora Neale Hurston citations

Page 2

“It was the meanest moment of eternity.”

“… she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see…”

“I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.”

“There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food.”

“Love, I find, is like singing.”

“If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.”

“He looked like the love thoughts of women.”

“Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them.”

“Oh to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!”

“An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.”

“Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to "jump at de sun."”

“You heard me. You ain't blind.”

“Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person.”

“Please God, please suh, don't let him love nobody else but me. Maybe Ah'm is uh fool, Lawd, lak dey say, but Lawd, Ah been so lonesome, and Ah been waitin', Jesus. Ah done waited uh long time.”

“It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.”

“You'se something tuh make uh man forgit to git old and forgit tuh die.”

“Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.”

“Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.”

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

“Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof.”

“She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen.”

“And I can't die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I'm a cracked plate.”

“It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.”

“My head was full of misty fumes of doubt.”

“He was the average mortal. It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.”

“Look lak she been livin' through uh hundred years in January without one day of spring.”

“She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.”

“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.”

“My sense of humor will always stand in the way of my seeing myself, my family, my race or my nation as the whole intent of the universe.”