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7f181fd
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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.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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011e09f
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Her resolutions against Jim Meserve were just like the lightning-bugs holding a convention. They met at night and made scorning speeches against the sun and swore to do away with it and light up the world themselves. But the sun came up next morning and they all went under the leaves and owned up that the sun was boss-man in the world.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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253592a
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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 about him. He was a glance from God.
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the-sacred
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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78e16c0
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But I ain't puttin' it in de street. Ah'm tellin' you.' 'Ah jus lak uh chicken. Chicken drink water, but he don't pee-pee.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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3499ca6
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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.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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a155fac
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I did not know then, as I know now, that people are prone to build a statue of the kind of person it pleases them to be. And few people want to be forced to ask themselves, "What is there is no me like my statue?" The thing to do is to grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear."
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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3e66f4f
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The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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d581777
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Dis love! Dat's just whut's got us uh pullin' and haulin' and sweatin' and doin' from can't see in de mornin' till can't see at night." Nanny to Janie"
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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28518c6
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The one who makes the idols never worships them, however tenderly he might have molded the clay. You cannot have knowledge and worship at the same time. Mystery is the essence of divinity. Gods must keep their distances from men.
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idols
worship
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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77466c5
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Well, she thought, that big old dawg with the hatred in his eyes had killed her after all.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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a07ca4b
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Ah done growed ten feet higher from jus' listenin' tuh you, Janie. Ah ain't satisfied with mahself no mo'. Ah means tuh make Sam take me fishin' wid him after this.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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8d2c347
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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... Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that she would worship there.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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626e05c
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They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without master...
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rumors
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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c695b81
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We Afficans try raise our chillun right. When dey say we ign'nant we go together and build de school house. Den de county send us a teacher. We Afficky men doan wait lak de other colored people till de white folks gittee ready to build us a school. We build one for ourself den astee de county to send us de teacher.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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5e74ccc
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Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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b7c6324
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Mind-pictures brought feelings, and feelings dragged out dramas from the hollows of the heart.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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498fc69
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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.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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ab0bf86
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There was already something dead about him. He didn't rear back in his knees any longer. He squatted over his ankles when he walked. That stillness at the back of his neck. His prosperous-looking belly...sagged like a load suspended from his loins.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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22bcfbb
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Ah done lived Grandma's way, now Ah means tuh live mine.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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284bbd7
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Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard. She had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously. How? Why? It was..
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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651a63b
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They sat on the boarding house porch and saw the sun plunge into the same crack in the earth from which the night emerged.
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crack
earth
night
renewal
sun
their-eyes-were-watching-god
zora-neale-hurston
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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4c15dbe
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Long before the year was up, Janie noticed that her husband had stopped talkin to he rin rhymes.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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83ae9d4
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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 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.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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985a18b
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she received all things with the stolidness of the earth which soaks up urine and perfume with the same indifference.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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6f0055f
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Now they got to look into me loving Tea Cake and see whether it was done right or not! They don't know if life is a mess of corn-meal dumplings, and if love is a bed-quilt!
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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c278649
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Nanny's words made Janie's kiss across the gatepost seem like a manure pile after a rain
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simile
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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c6dcf31
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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.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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a977129
|
That though the heart is breaking, happiness can exist in a moment, also. And because the moment in which we live is all the time there really is, we can keep going.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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3e08367
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Once upon uh time, Ah never 'spected nothin', Tea Cake, but bein' dead from the standin' still and tryin' tuh laugh. But you come 'long and made somethin' outa me. So Ah'm thankful fuh anything we come through together." "Thanky, Ma'am."
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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8adaf4f
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Gods always behave like the people who make them.
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religion
voodoo
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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67691f1
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All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped... Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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77beb61
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She must talk to a man who was ten immensities away.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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448216e
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It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.
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living
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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3e48507
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At the bottom in the gut of jazz if you listen closely you can hear--no matter how complexly, obliquely, mysteriously stylized--somebody talking, crying, growling, singing, farting, praying, stomping, voicing in all those modes through which our bodies communicate some tale about how it feels to be here on earth or leaving, or about the sweet pain of hanging on between the coming and going.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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e4a4a3c
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Here Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon--for no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you--and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter's neck tight enough to choke her.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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caae8bc
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Aw, git reconciled!.. You can't git her wid no fish sandwich.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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6415771
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It's uh known fact...you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo' papa and yo' mama and nobody else can't tell yuh and show yuh.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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06cfd33
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Besides she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn't represent a thing she wanted to know about.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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e843540
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Ah done been tuh de horizon and back and now Ah kin set heah in mah house and live by comparisons.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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7387699
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If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all. Ah wuz fumblin' round and God opened de door.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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1fdb890
|
Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant. It was just so. Janie felt glad of the thought, for then it wouldn't seem so destructive and mouldy. She wouldn't be lonely anymore.
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love
marriage
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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ca1b1a3
|
He was a glance from God.
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african-american-literature
love
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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82090df
|
Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what it was. But mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods--come and gone with the sun.
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Zora Neale Hurston |
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bad00ff
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The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning and raced across the blue dome and dipped into the sea of fire every evening.
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death
heartache
heartbreak
hero
renewal
sun
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Zora Neale Hurston |