“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 same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”

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.