Their Eyes Were Watching God

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

“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.

Her hair is not what you might call straight. It’s negro hair, but it’s got a kind of white flavor. Like the piece of string out of a ham. It’s not ham at all, but it’s been around ham and got the flavor.

Иногда я чувствую дискриминацию по отношению к себе, но это не сердит меня. Это просто удивляет. Как кто-то может отказать себе в удовольствии быть в одной компании со мной? Это выше моего понимания.

"Dem meatskins is got tuh rattle tuh make out they’s alive. "

She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief.

"Ah jus’ know dat God snatched me out de fire through you."

Tea Cake, the son of Evening Sun, had to die for loving her.

The next day hunger had driven her out to shift. She had stood on the streets and smiled and smiled, and then smiled and begged and then just begged.

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

"So us is goin’ off somewhere and start all over in Tea Cake’s way. Dis ain’t no business proposition, and no race after property and titles. Dis is uh love game. Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine.”

"Jody ain’t never in his life picked out no color for me. De world picked out black and white for mournin’, Joe didn’t. So Ah wasn’t wearin’ it for him. Ah was wearin’ it for de rest of y’all.”

He was a glance from God.

She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love. Most humans didn’t love one another nohow, and this mislove was so strong that even common blood couldn’t overcome it all the time. She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around. But she had been set in the market-place to sell.

“But as de old folk always say, Ah'm born but Ah ain't dead. No tellin' whut Ah'm liable tuh do yet.”

“Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it's some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nothin' but what we see. ”