The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor.
So Janie began to think of Death. Death, that strange being with the huge square toes who lived way in the West. The great one who lived in the straight house like a platform without sides to it, and...
I did not know then, as I know now, that people are prone to build a statue of the kind of person it pleases them to be. And few people want to be forced to ask themselves, What is there is no me like...
Hurston moves in and out of these distinct voices effortlessly, seamlessly, just as she does in Their Eyes to chart Janie’s coming to consciousness. It is this usage of a divided voice, a double voice...
Hurrying, dragging, falling, crying, calling out names hopefully and hopelessly.
Ah'll clean 'em, you fry 'em and let's eat,' he said with the assurance of not being refused. They went out into the kitchen and fixed up the hot fish and corn muffins and ate. Then Tea Cake went to t...
You’se something tuh make uh man forgit tuh git old and forgit tuh die.
When Janie looked out of her door she saw the drifting mists gathered in the west -- that cloud field of the sky -- to arm themselves with thunders and march forth against the world. Louder and higher...
They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.
There is two things everybody got to find out for theirselves. They got to find out about love and they got to find out about living.
That though the heart is breaking, happiness can exist in a moment, also. And because the moment in which we live is all the time there really is, we can keep going.
She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.
Mouths don't empty themselves unless ears are sympathetic and knowing.
Her resolutions against Jim Meserve were just like the lightning-bugs holding a convention. They met at night and made scorning speeches against the sun and swore to do away with it and light up the w...
Dis love! Dat’s just whut’s got us uh pullin’ and haulin’ and sweatin’ and doin’ from can’t see in de mornin’ till can’t see at night. Nanny to Janie
Common danger made common friends. Nothing sought a conquest over the other.
At the bottom in the gut of jazz if you listen closely you can hear—no matter how complexly, obliquely, mysteriously stylized—somebody talking, crying, growling, singing, farting, praying, stomping, v...
Anyone who looked more white folkish than herself was better than she was in her criteria, therefore it was right that they should be cruel to her at times, just as she was cruel to those more negroid...
All these words from the seller, but not one word from the sold. The Kings and Captains whose words moved ships. But not one word from the cargo. The thoughts of the black ivory, the coin of Africa, h...
Ah wanted to preach a great sermon about colored women sittin’ on high, but they wasn’t no pulpit for me. Freedom found me wid a baby daughter in mah arms, so Ah said Ah’d take a broom and a cook-pot...