A biography for Zora Neale Hurstonhasn’t been written yet.
“It was a weak spot in any nation to have a large body of disaffected people within its confusion.”
“It seems that fighting is a game where everybody is the loser.”
“Gods always behave like the people who make them.”
“When one is too old for love, one finds great comfort in good dinners.”
“She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight.”
“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.”
“The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.”
“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 sword in my hands.”
“It is one of the blessings of this world that few people see visions and dream dreams.”
“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.”
“No man may make another free.”
“A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.”
“No, I do not weep at the world. I'm too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
“Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.”
“For the first time she could see a man's head naked of its skull. Saw the cunning thoughts race in and out through the caves and promontories of his mind long before they darted through the tunnel of his mouth.”
“I did not just fall in love. I made a parachute jump.”
“Sometimes God gits familiar wid us womenfolks too and talks His inside business. He told me.how surprised y'all is goin' tuh be if you ever find out you don't know half as much 'bout us as you think yo do. It's so easy to make yo'self out God Almighty when you ain't got nothin' tuh strain against but women and chickens.”
“Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.”
“It's a funny thing, the less people have to live for, the less nerve they have to risk losing nothing.”
“When a man keeps beating me to the draw mentally, he begins to get glamorous.”