Zora Neale Hurston

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

“Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time.”

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”

“They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.”

“There is something about poverty that smells like death.”

“No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you.”

“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.”

“So I do not pray. I accept the means at my disposal for working out my destiny. It seems to me that I have been given a mind and will power for that very purpose.”

“The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning and raced across the blue dome and dipped into the sea of fire every evening.”

“I regret all of my books.”

“All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”

“Janie knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making.”

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

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

“Insensate cruelty to those you can whip, and grovelling submission to those you can't. Once having set up her idols and built altars to the, it was imevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that she would accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who recieve homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped Though indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”

“It was the meanest moment of eternity.”

“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.”

“But for the national welfare, it is urgent to realize that the minorities do think, and think about something other than the race problem.”

“Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.”

“Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it's some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nothin' but what we see.”