“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.”

American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker

Zora Neale Hurston was an American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker. She is best known for work that portrayed racial struggle in the early 20th-century American South, and for her landmark novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. Hurston also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, an autobiography, ethnographies, and many essays. Her research on Hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou, including Tell My Horse, helped shape later thinking in anthropology and ethnography, while her work also bridged literature and Africana Studies.