Quotes from book
Dust Tracks on a Road

Name: Dust Tracks on a Road
Author: Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston

Dust Tracks on a Road is the 1942 autobiography of black American writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.

“Mystery is the essence of divinity”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road

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

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Ch.2 : My Folks, p. 13.
Context: Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to "jump at de sun." We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.

“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.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road

“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.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road

“Those that don't got it, can't show it. Those that got it, can't hide it.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Variant: If you haven’t got it, you can’t show it. If you have got it, you can’t hide it.
Source: Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Ch. 12 : My People! My People!

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

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road

“I made up my mind to keep my feelings to myself since they did not seem to matter to anyone else but me.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road

“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.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road

“Research is formalized curiosity.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.
Source: Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Ch. 10 : Research, p. 143.

“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.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road

“Love, I find is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Ch. 14 : Love, p. 203.

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Ch. 10 : Research, p. 143

“If you haven’t got it, you can’t show it. If you have got it, you can’t hide it.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Ch. 12 : My People! My People!