Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was an influential African American writer, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She is best known for her novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” which is considered a classic of African American literature. Hurston’s works focused on the experiences of African Americans, particularly those in the rural South.
Born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, Hurston grew up in Eatonville, Florida, one of the first all-black towns in the United States. This unique upbringing in a self-governing African American community had a significant impact on her writing and worldview.
Hurston attended Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, D.C., where she studied anthropology and folklore. She later continued her studies at Barnard College, becoming the college’s first African American student. During her time at Barnard, she worked closely with anthropologist Franz Boas and conducted fieldwork in the Caribbean, particularly in Jamaica and Haiti.
Hurston’s anthropological work heavily influenced her writing, as she incorporated folklore, cultural practices, and dialects into her stories. She believed in the importance of preserving African American traditions and folklore, and this is evident in her works.
In 1937, Hurston published her most famous novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” The book tells the story of Janie Crawford, a young African American woman who embarks on a journey of self-discovery and empowerment in the face of societal and personal challenges. Although the book initially received mixed reviews, it has since been recognized as a masterpiece of American literature.
Despite her significant contributions to literature, Hurston faced financial struggles and was often overlooked by the literary establishment during her lifetime. She worked various jobs, including as a maid and a librarian, to support herself.
In addition to her writing, Hurston also made documentary films, including “The Great Day” (1935), which documented a day in the life of an African American community in rural Florida. She was passionate about capturing the everyday experiences and culture of African Americans on film.
Zora Neale Hurston passed away on January 28, 1960, in Fort Pierce, Florida. In the decades following her death, her work gained renewed recognition and appreciation. Her writing and anthropological contributions continue to be celebrated for their unique portrayal of African American life and culture.
Zora Neale Hurston Quotes
1. “Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
2. “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
3. “The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
4. “Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
5. “I love myself when I am laughing. . . and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
6. “If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would get written at all. It might be better to ask yourself ‘Why?’ afterward than before … There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
7. “Love is like the sea. It’s a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
8. “Life is the flower for which love is the honey.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
9. “When one is too old for love, one finds great comfort in good dinners.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
10. “I did not just fall in love. I made a parachute jump.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
11. “A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
12. “Those that don’t get it, can’t show it. Those that got it, can’t hide it.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
13. “The man who interprets Nature is always held in great honor.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
14. “Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
15. “Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
16. “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
17. “Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
18. “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
19. “It was not death she feared. It was a misunderstanding.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
20. “There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
21. “I do not weep at the world I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
22. “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
23. “No man may make another free.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
24. “An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
25. “Everybody has some special road of thought along which they travel when they are alone to themselves. And his road of thought is what makes every man what he is.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
26. “An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
27. “Bitterness is the coward’s revenge on the world for having been hurt.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
28. “I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That’s living.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
29. “I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
30. “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
31. “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
32. “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
33. “Love, I find, is like singing.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
34. “No, I do not weep at the world. I’m too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
35. “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
36. “Acquiring the reading habit early is the important thing. Taste and natural development will take care of the rest later on.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
37. “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 N*grohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
38. “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
39. “I made up my mind to keep my feelings to myself since they did not seem to matter to anyone else but me.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
40. “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
41. “People can be slave ships in shoes.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
42. “A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
43. “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.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
44. “He looked like the love thoughts of women.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
45. “Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
46. “Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
47. “It was not death she feared. It was a misunderstanding.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
48. “It was the meanest moment of eternity.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
49. “No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
50. “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.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
51. “Oh to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!”
― Zora Neale Hurston
52. “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
53. “She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
54. “She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
55. “She starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
56. “She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
57. “She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
58. “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.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
59. “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
60. “Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
61. “The morning air was like a new dress. That made her feel the apron tied around her waist. She untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the road and walked on, picking flowers and making a bouquet. From now on until death, she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
62. “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
63. “There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
64. “They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
65. “When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
