Zora Neale Hurston

I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peak of the mountain and caught the honey of the sun in my hair.

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

I love myself when I am laughing… and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.

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

Gods always behave like the people who created them.

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.

I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it.

It seems to me that the human race is like a cut-glass dish. This time it is a dark color, next time it is a lighter color; but it is always the same dish.

Dat's what makes a man and woman. It's in de mind. It ain't in de body.

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.

The very first thing I want to do is to get hold of a white man and get him to tell me how he feels about being white.

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

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. That is the life of men.

There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.

Folks don't do nothin' outa hate, they do it outa love. Love of self.

I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.

All my life I have been fighting to be a woman. I have been fighting to be an individual. I have been fighting to be myself.

No matter what the race of people, they are always a little better than any other race.

Gator got his guts out in the water and the buzzards got his eyes.

The wind is a sweet-singing fool.