This use of the vernacular became the fundamental framework for all but one of her novels and is particularly effective in her classic work Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937, which is mo...
Then you must tell 'em dat love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and a...
The varicolored cloud dust that the sun has stirred up in the sky was settling by slow degrees.
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 r...
Sometimes God gits familiar wid us womenfolks too and talks His inside business. He told me.how surprised y'all is goin' tuh be if you ever find out you don't know half as much 'bout us as you think y...
Naw! Mah own mind had tuh be squeezed and crowded out tuh make room for yours in me.
Janie, Ah hope God may kill me, if Ah’m lyin’. Nobody else on earth kin hold uh candle tuh you, baby. You got de keys to de kingdom.
It’s uh known fact...you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo’ papa and yo’ mama and nobody else can’t tell yuh and show yuh.
In a little wind-lull, Tea Cake touched Janie and said, ‘Ah reckon you wish now you had of stayed in yo’ big house ’way from such as dis, don’t yuh?’‘Naw.’‘Naw?’‘Yeah, naw. People don't die till dey t...
He done taught me de maiden language all over.
Half Gods are worshipped with wine and Flowers. Real Gods require Blood.
But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw, was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me. . . . It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory. —Zora Neale Hurston,...
But stillness was the sleep of swords.
All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped... Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.
Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think.
When one is too old for love, one finds great comfort in good dinners.
You saw a fluttering fan before her face and magnolia blooms and sleepy lakes under the moonlight when she walked.
Where is de house where de mouse is de leader?
Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves.
They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty.