“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Ch. 3, p. 21.
Quotes from book
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel and by African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston. It is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and it is probably Hurston's best known work. The novel explores main character Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny".Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20th century, the novel was initially poorly received. Since the late 20th century, it has been regarded as influential to both African-American literature and women's literature. TIME included the novel in its 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923.
“If you are silent about the pain they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God
“You'se something tuh make uh man forgit to git old and forgit tuh die.”
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Variant: Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God
“Look lak she been livin' through uh hundred years in January without one day of spring.”
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God
“She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.”
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God
“She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.”
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God
“Oh to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!”
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Ch. 20, p. 193.
Context: Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.
