Zora Neale Hurston quotes

Zora Neale Hurston was an influential African American author, anthropologist, and folklorist, best known for her novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God." Her work celebrated Black culture and explored themes of identity, community, and resilience in the American South. She inspired generations of writers and played a key role in the Harlem Renaissance. Here are 118 of her quotes:

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

Zora Neale Hurston

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.

Zora Neale Hurston

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.

Zora Neale Hurston

It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.

Zora Neale Hurston

If you haven't got it,you can't show it. If you have got it,you can't hide it.

Zora Neale Hurston

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

Zora Neale Hurston

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

Zora Neale Hurston

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.

Zora Neale Hurston

A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.

Zora Neale Hurston

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.

Zora Neale Hurston

I do not weep at the world I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Zora Neale Hurston

Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.

Zora Neale Hurston

There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food.

Zora Neale Hurston

Please God, please suh, don't let him love nobody else but me. Maybe Ah'm is uh fool, Lawd, lak dey say, but Lawd, Ah been so lonesome, and Ah been waitin', Jesus. Ah done waited uh long time.

Zora Neale Hurston

You'se something tuh make uh man forgit to git old and forgit tuh die.

Zora Neale Hurston

And I can't die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I'm a cracked plate.

Zora Neale Hurston

The man who interprets Nature is always held in great honor.

Zora Neale Hurston

An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.

Zora Neale Hurston

She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.

Zora Neale Hurston

She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.

Zora Neale Hurston

So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.

Zora Neale Hurston

Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.

Zora Neale Hurston