“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston

But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate. So when speakers stood up when the occasion demanded and said “Our beloved Mayor,” it was one of those statements that everybody says but not actually believes like “God is everywhere.”


he’s uh man at changes everything, but nothin’ don’t change him.


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.


She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen.


It was funny if you thought about it right quick, but it got pitiful if you thought about it awhile.


Then Joe Starks realized all the meanings and his vanity bled like a flood.


But the stillness was the sleep of swords.


No mo’ than Ag took befo’ and no mo’ than anybody else takes when dey gits married. It always changes folks, and sometimes it brings out dirt and meanness day even de person didn’t know they had in ’em themselves. You know day. Maybe Tea Cake might turn out lak dat. Maybe not. Anyhow Ah’m read and willin’ tuh try ‘im.


It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful.


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


He wuz hollerin’ for me tuh turn him loose, but baby, Ah turn him every way but loose.


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 than herself in direct ratio to their negroness. Like the pecking-order in a chicken yard. Insensate cruelty to those you can whip, and groveling submission to those you can’t.


It is so easy to be hopeful in the ay time when you can see the things you wish on.