Zora Neale Hurston

"When I set my eyes on something, I do not look away until I have it."

"I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul."

"It seems to me that effort is the thing that really counts."

"We are all instruments of the great plan."

"The spring with all of its new life symbolizes the resurrection of the spirit."

"Tell me, who hasn't wanted to know the future?"

"I have always been more interested in the future than in preserving the past."

"Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear."

"Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person."

"Silence is only eloquent when it comes from the soul."

"The tongue is but three inches long, yet it can kill a man six feet tall."

"I have felt a slight twinge of loneliness, but that is all."

"The object of every true education should be to make people not merely do right things, but enjoy right things."

"I love myself when I am laughing."

"Art is not a mirror held up to life, but a hammer with which to shape it."

"Everybody needs somebody in all this world."

"What one begets, so shall it reap."

"I am my mother's daughter, and the drums of her time still beat in my heart."

"The real Negro hasn't been written about yet."

"You got to get up off your knees to fight."

"It is hard to ignore the feeling that you are being called to something greater."

"The sting of injustice is the sting of memory."

"I knew that I had the capacity to accomplish remarkable things."

"Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand."

"Without this moment, the past does not exist."

"The ability to curse smoothly is a mark of good breeding."

"I will seek out the good in all people and situations."

"Being brave means you are scared but you do it anyway."

"Money never whipped anybody. You lay down the lash yourself."

"The Negro was not supposed to understand fully, just believe."