Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

I've always been interested in how we survive and how resourceful we are as Americans.

I'm really not thick-skinned - my wife will tell you that I take sunsets personally - but I know that I've got the belly for whatever comes down the pike. I think it's tenacity. You've been there before, and you just have to recall, 'How did I handle that one?'

I conditioned myself many years ago that nobody could hurt me.

I thank God I am endued with such qualities that if I were turned out of the Realm in my petticoat I were able to live in any place in Christendom.

I often think I am a better person because I lived for many years of my life with a flashlight. I have developed skills I did not think were possible - bathing with a cup of water by candlelight, for instance, and writing a story with a headlamp on.

If I couldn't do it, then I'd be defeated. I've got the tools to do it. I never did question my tools.

I realized that I'm a soft person. I think I'm sensitive. I wanted very much to be tough and I think movie stars have a certain kind of resilience and toughness to them, but I'm quite a sensitive young lady in some respects.

We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more.

You have within you right now, everything you need to deal with whatever the world can throw at you.

They can put me in a jungle. Still, I can create.

I'd go at anyone. I took all of my brothers' bull. It made me who I am.

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it.

Pain is no evil, unless it conquers us.

If I fall, I fall. I'll rise up like anybody else.

I'd learned a lot in the Army. I knew that above all things in the world I had to become so big, so strong that people and their hatred could never touch me.

There's no room in my life for feeling sorry for myself.

I think we all depend on a significant other, and we think if they leave me, I'll die. But that's not true. We're all much stronger than we think we are.

Even as a child, I found a way to survive.

I've always been proud of the fact that I can hold it together and I rarely break. It's a point of pride for me.

I've always been pretty independent, no matter what situation: good, bad, ugly, happy, sad. I dig deep, and I get over it.

My mom had not worked a day in her life, and then she woke up when I was 15 and found herself with four children, no job, no money. But she set out and made it all OK for us, and from that, I saw that there's no problem that can't be solved.

I'm not going to whine or get depressed. Who's going to feel sorry for me? Nobody.

At heart, I'm a dude from South Central Los Angeles. We roll the way we roll because we had survival tactics; we had to learn how to adapt. That's just me.

Wipe the tears away, stand up, be a man, run your business, find a way.

I don't let people affect me.