Zora Neale Hurston - People Quotes

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The monstropolous beast had left his bed. The two hundred miles a hour wind had loosed his chains. He seized hold of his dikes and ran forward until he met the quarters; uprooted them like grass and rushed on after his supposed-to-be conquerors, rolling the dikes, rolling the houses, rolling the people in the houses along with other timbers. The sea was walking the earth with a heavy heel.

Zora Neale Hurston
I have been amazed by the Anglo-Saxon's lack of curiosity about the internal lives and emotions of the Negroes, and for that matter, any non-Anglo-Saxon peoples within our borders, above the class of unskilled labor.

Zora Neale Hurston
The inference is, that God has restated the superiority of the West. God always does like that when a thousand white people surround one dark one. Dark people are always "bad" when they do not admit the Divine Plan like that. A certain Javanese man who sticks up for Indonesian Independence is very lowdown by the papers, and suspected of being a Japanese puppet.

Zora Neale Hurston
The whole matter revolves around the self-respect of my people. How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody toassociate with me who does not wish me near them?

Zora Neale Hurston
Our lives are so diversified, internal attitudes so varied, appearances and capabilities so different, that there is no possible classification so catholic that it will cover us all, except My people! My people!

Zora Neale Hurston
If it was so honorable and glorious to be black, why was it the yellow-skinned people among us had so much prestige?

Zora Neale Hurston
It's a funny thing, the less people have to live for, the less nerve they have to risk losing—nothing.

Zora Neale Hurston
Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.

Zora Neale Hurston
It is one of the blessings of this world that few people see visions and dream dreams.

Zora Neale Hurston
If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all.

Zora Neale Hurston
She [Ethel Waters] is one of the strangest bundles of people that I have ever met. You can just see the different folks wrapped up in her if you associate with her long. Just like watching an open fire — the color and shape of her personality is never the same twice.

Zora Neale Hurston
She often spoke to falling seeds and said, "Ah hope you fall on soft ground," because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman.

Zora Neale Hurston
It was a weak spot in any nation to have a large body of disaffected people within its confusion.

Zora Neale Hurston
"Well, Ah see Mouth-Almighty is still sittin' in de same place. And Ah reckon they got me up in they mouth now." "Yes indeed. You know if you pass some people and don't speak tuh suit 'em dey got tuh go way back in yo' life and see whut you ever done. They know mo' 'bout yuh than you do yo' self. They done 'heard' 'bout you just what they hope done happened." "If God don't think no mo' 'bout 'em than Ah do, they's a lost ball in de high grass."

Zora Neale Hurston
It's no use of talking unless people understand what you say.

Zora Neale Hurston
Grown people know that they do not always know the why of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof. Hence the irritation they show when children keep on demanding to know if a thing is so and how the grown folks got the proof of it. It is so troublesome because it is disturbing to the pigeonhole way of life.

Zora Neale Hurston
That is the way with people... If they do you wrong, they invent a bad name for you, a good name for their acts and then destroy you in the name of virtue.

Zora Neale Hurston
I did not know then, as I know now, that people are prone to build a statue of the kind of person that it pleases them to be. And few people want to be forced to ask themselves, 'What if there is no me like my statue?'

Zora Neale Hurston
Gods always behave like the people who make them.

Zora Neale Hurston
She starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see...

Zora Neale Hurston
When the people sat around on the porch and passed around the pictures of their thoughts for the others to look at and see, it was nice. The fact that the thought pictures were always crayon enlargements of life made it even nicer to listen to.

Zora Neale Hurston