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41 " 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. "
― Zora Neale Hurston , Their Eyes Were Watching God
42 " She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her. "
43 " Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves. "
44 " There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought. "
45 " It is so easy to be hopeful in the daytime when you can see the things you wish on. But it was night, it stayed night. Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands . . . They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against cruel walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God. "
46 " She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop. "
47 " She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. "
48 " She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them. "
49 " Then you must tell 'em dat love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore. "
50 " They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God. "
51 " Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see. "
52 " Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see. "
53 " ...she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see... "
54 " Oh to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! "
55 " He looked like the love thoughts of women. "
56 " Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them. "
57 " ..she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. .. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. "
58 " 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. "
59 " It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding. "
60 " 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 "