Zora Neale Hurston

Digital Fire

One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong black female protagonist—Hurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

loisesya

clara

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.

"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. An envious heart makes a treacherous ear. They done heard 'bout you just what they hope done happened."

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

Dat’s de very prong all us black women gits hung on. Dis love! Dat's just whut's got us uh pullin’ and uh haulin’ and sweatin’ and doin' from can't see in de mornin’ till can’t see at night. Dat's how come de ole folks say dat bein' uh fool don’t kill nobody. It jus’ makes you sweat.

So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time. But when the pollen again glided the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody had ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. 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. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. 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.

No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.

Dey gointuh make 'miration 'cause mah love didn't work lak they love, if dey ever had any. 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 all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.

Their Eyes Were Watching God quotes

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