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.”

“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“Those that don't got it, can't show it. Those that got it, can't hide it.”

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

“Learning without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey's back.”

“Gods always behave like the people who created them.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“What is bitter to endure may be sweet to remember.”

“There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.”