Zora Neale Hurston Quotes

I didn't want to be alone, but I had to learn that the dimensions of my feelings are too violent. I had to learn this.

In certain areas of my life, I actively seek out solitude. Especially for someone in my line of work, solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person's heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time steadily cuts away at me from the inside.

I knew this feeling, the 2 a.m. loneliness that I'd practically invented.

I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.

That’s what love’s all about. You’re the only one having those wonderful feelings, but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark your mind and body have to bear it all. All by yourself.

Some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again.

I thought about it for awhile, hiding it from the rest of my mind. But I didn't ruin my birthday by secretly thinking about it too hard

As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.

I don't feel that way anymore," Nico muttered. "I mean... I gave up on Percy. I was young and impressionable, and I- I don't..." His voice cracked, and Jason could tell the guy was about to get teary-eyed. Whether Nico had really given up on Percy or not, Jason couldn't imagine what it had been like for Nico all those years, keeping a secret that would've been unthinkable to share in the 1940s, denying who he was, feeling completely alone- even more isolated than other demigods. "Nico," he said gently, "I've seen a lot of brave things. But what you did? That was maybe the bravest.

We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.

The worst injury is feeling you don't belong so much / to you.

Feeling alone guides the mind.

Impossible, I realize, to enter another’s solitude. If it is true that we can ever come to know another human being, even to a small degree, it is only to the extent that he is willing to make himself known. A man will say: I am cold. Or else he will say nothing, and we will see him shivering. Either way, we will know that he is cold. But what of the man who says nothing and does not shiver? Where all is intractable, here all is hermetic and evasive, one can do no more than observe. But whether one can make sense of what he observes is another matter entirely

I would much rather sit, dimmed by inattention, and study the atmosphere and the silence and dance between people, but often times I’m not offered this privilege. The necessity for isolation, and the striving for popularity is the only contradiction I find in being a writer and an actress.

Sorrow and solitude, these are the precious things/ And the only words that are worth remembering.

I keep myself locked as a box when it matters, and broken open when it doesn't matter at all.

I had so many secrets and so much social repression throughout my life. I guess I'm just a shy person and feel like my true self is unacceptable to most people.

Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.

I eat my heart out alone.

Alexander smoked and watched her from his tree stump bench. What are you doing? she would ask him. Nothing, he would reply. Nothing but growing my pain into madness.

There isn't a thought in my head I care to be alone with for more than five minutes.

You can sit up here, feeling above it all while knowing you’re not, coming to the lonely conclusion that the only thing you can ever really know about anyone is that you don’t know anything about them at all.

Such a great misfortune, not to be able to be alone.

Those nights lying alone are not discontinuous with this cold hectic dawn. It is who I am.

I was bored. Sad. Lonely. It was only a matter of time before I cracked.