Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” Quotes (42 Quotes)

For the first time she could see a man's head naked of its skull. Saw the cunning thoughts race in and out through the caves and promontories of his mind long before they darted through the tunnel of his mouth.

She couldn't make him look just like any other man to her. He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom - a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung above him. He was a glance from God.

They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.

From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom…It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? This singing she heard that had nothing to do with her ears. The rose of the world was breathing out smell. It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep.

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

They plan and they fix and they do, and then some kitchen-dwelling fiend slips a scorchy, soggy, tasteless mess into their pots and pans…So when the bread didn't rise, and the fish wasn't quite done at the bone, and the rice was scorched, he slapped Janie until she had a ringing sound in her ears and told her about her brains before he stalked on back to the store.

He looked like the love thoughts of women.

She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.

Well, she thought, that big old dawg with the hatred in his eyes had killed her after all.

He was the average mortal. It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.

She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.

When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another.

Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them.

She tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair. The weight, the length, the glory was all there. She took careful stock of herself, then combed her hair and tied it back up again.

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 and lower and wider the sound and motion spread, mounting, sinking, darking.

In the cool afternoon the fiend from hell specifically sent to lovers arrived at Janie's ear. Doubt.

She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight.

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.

It was the meanest moment of eternity.

She's got those big black eyes with plenty shiny white in them that makes them shine like brand new money and she knows what God gave women eyelashes for, too. Her hair is not what you might call straight. It's negro hair, but it's got a kind of white flavor. Like the piece of string out of a ham. It's not ham at all, but it's been around ham and got the flavor.

You'se something tuh make uh man forgit to git old and forgit tuh die.

Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.

So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time.

Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches

So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.

Long before the year was up, Janie noticed that her husband had stopped talkin to he rin rhymes.

Somebody got to think for women and chillun and cows. I god, they sho don't think none theirselves… When Ah see one thing Ah understands ten. You see ten things and don't understand one.

Maybe if she had known some other way to try, she might have made his face different. But what the other way could be, she had no idea.

Tea Cake, the son of the Evening Sun, had to die for loving her.

Nanny's words made Janie's kiss across the gatepost seem like a manure pile after a rain