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.

When one is too old for love, one finds great comfort in good dinners.

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.

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

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.

It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.

All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the...

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...

Then you must tell them that love isn’t something like a grindstone that’s the same thing everywhere and do the same thing to everything it touches. Love is like the sea. It is a moving...

I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I...

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.

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 same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the...

Look lak we done run our conversation from grass roots tuh pine trees.

I would like just a little of her sunshine to soak into my soul. I would like that a lot.

Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.

No, I do not weep at the world. I’m too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

He was the average mortal. It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.

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,...

And I can’t die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I’m a cracked plate.

When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he...

…you got tuh go there tuh know there.

The monstropolous beast had left his bed. The two hundred miles a hour wind had loosed his chains. He seized hold of his dikes and ran forward until he met the quarters; uprooted them like...

Sometimes God gits familiar wid us womenfolks too and talks His inside business. He told me.how surprised y’all is goin’ tuh be if you ever find out you don’t know half as much ’bout us...

For the first time she could see a man’s head naked of its skull. Saw the cunning thoughts race in and out through the caves and promontories of his mind long before they darted through...

I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.

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...

When Janie looked out of her door she saw the drifting mists gathered in the west — that cloud field of the sky — to arm themselves with thunders and march forth against the world....

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...

Please God, please suh, don’t let him love nobody else but me. Maybe Ah’m is uh fool, Lawd, lak dey say, but Lawd, Ah been so lonesome, and Ah been waitin’, Jesus. Ah done waited...

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.

An envious heart makes a treacherous ear. They done ‘heard’ bout you just what they hope done happened.

From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom…It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? This singing she heard that...

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’...

Now, women forget all the things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.

Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof.

Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue.

If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.

Nanny’s words made Janie’s kiss across the gatepost seem like a manure pile after a rain

No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.

Insensate cruelty to those you can whip, and grovelling submission to those you can’t. Once having set up her idols and built altars to the, it was imevitable that she would worship there. It was...

Perhaps I am just a coward who loves to laugh at life better than I do cry with it. But when I do get to crying, boy, I can roll a mean tear.

So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time. But when the pollen again gilded the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate...

It was the meanest moment of eternity.

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

They plan and they fix and they do, and then some kitchen-dwelling fiend slips a scorchy, soggy, tasteless mess into their pots and pans…So when the bread didn’t rise, and the fish wasn’t quite done...

But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate.

She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief.

I had hundreds of books under my skin already. Not selected reading, all of it. Some of it could be called trashy. I had been through Nick Carter, Horatio Alger, Bertha M. Clay and the...

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.