{"author":"Zora Neale Hurston","author_id":"Zora+Neale+Hurston","total_quotes":81,"quotes":[{"text":"The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.","author":"Zora Neale Hurston","tags":["past","present","egg "],"id":4283,"author_id":"Zora+Neale+Hurston"},{"text":"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.","author":"Zora Neale Hurston","tags":["divinity","idols","worship"],"id":6211,"author_id":"Zora+Neale+Hurston"},{"text":"She often spoke to falling seeds and said, 'Ah hope you fall on soft ground,' because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman.","author":"Zora Neale Hurston","tags":["beautiful"],"id":15169,"author_id":"Zora+Neale+Hurston"},{"text":"Pheoby's hungry listening helped Janie to tell her story.","author":"Zora Neale Hurston","tags":["listening","storytelling"],"id":21154,"author_id":"Zora+Neale+Hurston"},{"text":"There could be something wrong with me because I see Negroes neither better nor worse than any other race. Race pride is a luxury I cannot afford. There are too many implications bend the term. Now, suppose a Negro does something really magnificent, and I glory, not in the benefit to mankind, but the fact that the doer was a Negro. Must I not also go hang my head in shame when a member of my race does something execrable? If I glory, then the obligation is laid upon me to blush also. I do glory when a Negro does something fine, I gloat because he or she has done a fine thing, but not because he was a Negro. That is incidental and accidental. It is the human achievement which I honor. I execrate a foul act of a Negro but again not on the grounds that the doer was a Negro, but because it was foul. A member of my race just happened to be the fouler of humanity. In other words, I know that I cannot accept responsibility for thirteen million people. Every tub must sit on its own bottom regardless. So 'Race Pride' in me had to go. And anyway, why should I be proud to be Negro? Why should anyone be proud to be white? Or yellow? Or red? After all, the word 'race' is a loose classification of physical characteristics. I tells nothing about the insides of people. Pointing a achievements tells nothing either. Races have never done anything. What seems race achievement is the work of individuals. The white race did not go into a laboratory and invent incandescent light. That was Edison. The Jews did not work out Relativity. That was Einstein. The Negros did not find out the inner secrets of peanuts and sweet potatoes, nor the secret of the development of the egg. That wad Carver and Just. If you are under the impression that every white man is Edison, just look around a bit. If you have the idea that every Negro is a Carver, you had better take off plenty of time to do your searching.","author":"Zora Neale Hurston","tags":["individuality","pride","race"],"id":31202,"author_id":"Zora+Neale+Hurston"},{"text":"Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.","author":"Zora Neale Hurston","tags":["soul","place","hiding "],"id":31505,"author_id":"Zora+Neale+Hurston"},{"text":"I have been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows  with a harp and sword in my hands.","author":"Zora Neale Hurston","tags":["adversity"],"id":37706,"author_id":"Zora+Neale+Hurston"},{"text":"Tain't no use in you cryin' . . . But folks is meant to cry 'bout somethin' or other. Better leave things de way dey is. Youse young yet. No tellin' whut mout happen befo' you die.","author":"Zora Neale Hurston","tags":["crying","life"],"id":45621,"author_id":"Zora+Neale+Hurston"},{"text":"Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.","author":"Zora Neale Hurston","tags":["love"],"id":48762,"author_id":"Zora+Neale+Hurston"},{"text":"They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without master...","author":"Zora Neale Hurston","tags":["gossip","rumors"],"id":52903,"author_id":"Zora+Neale+Hurston"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":81,"pages":9,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}