Zora Neale Hurston

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.
Zora Neale Hurston

I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.
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 a sword in my hands.
Zora Neale Hurston

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me.
Zora Neale Hurston

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.
Zora Neale Hurston

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.
Zora Neale Hurston

It is hard to apply oneself to study when there is no money to pay for food and lodging. I almost never explain these things when folks are asking me why I don't do this or that.
Zora Neale Hurston

No man may make another free.
Zora Neale Hurston

There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The soul lives in sickly air. People can be slaveships in shoes.
Zora Neale Hurston

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
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

When one is too old for love, one finds great comfort in good dinners.
Zora Neale Hurston

The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.
Zora Neale Hurston

Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.
Zora Neale Hurston

Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.
Zora Neale Hurston

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

My eyes and my mind keep taking me where my old legs can't keep up.
Zora Neale Hurston

Learning without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey's back.
Zora Neale Hurston

Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again.
Zora Neale Hurston

No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you.
Zora Neale Hurston

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
Zora Neale Hurston

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to "jump at de sun." We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

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. 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. They then act and do things accordingly.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

I want a busy life, a just mind, and a timely death.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural. 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, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Those that don't got it, can't show it. Those that got it, can't hide it.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

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, Dust Tracks