Z is for Zora Neale Hurston #AtoZChallenge

Today I’m continuing with the Blogging from A-Z Challenge! I’ll be posting every day except Sundays throughout April. This year, my readers voted for the theme “My Favourite Book Quotes”. So I’ve collected together the quotations that move me, inspire me and make me smile. I hope you enjoy them!

For letter Z, I’ve chosen quotes from one of the most moving books I’ve ever read, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I haven’t read it for several years, but it’s a book I think about often, especially in times of challenge.

My Favourite Quotes by Zora Neale Hurston

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

“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.”

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.”

“Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.”

“There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought.”

“It is so easy to be hopeful in the daytime when you can see the things you wish on. But it was night, it stayed night. Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands . . . They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against cruel walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”

“She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”

“It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.”

“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.”

“The morning air was like a new dress. That made her feel the apron tied around her waist. She untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the road and walked on, picking flowers and making a bouquet… From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything.”

“She knew things that nobody had ever told her… She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pastor of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one every sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making.”

“But as de old folks always say, Ah’m born but Ah ain’t dead. No tellin’ whut Ah’m liable tuh do yet.”

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Have you read anything by Zora Neale Hurston? Do you have any favourite quotes linked to the letter Z? Let me know in the comments!