Love makes you go all in. Love makes you voluntarily stupid. Love robs you of the humor you use to protect yourself and leaves you speechless. Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. And then it strips you down, and leaves you fully nude for all to see.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) American writer, folklorist, anthropologist
(Attributed)
This was originally cited here (without link to a source) as from Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, ch. 13 (1937). Per the comment below, I dug deeper to find an online copy of the book, and discovered the quotation was not there. The closest bits were in the final words of ch. 13:
He drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.
I cannot find any other citation for it, no work of Hurston that includes it (or any other fractions of it), and only one online book (beyond books of uncited quotations) that includes this full passage (and finishes it off with "... fully nude for all to see, / That's why it's so downright terrifying, / Falsely Yours, Zora Neale Hurston").
Because of that, I am changing the citation to a more ambiguous "(Attributed)". If anyone has more information, I'd be happy to update this entry.
Love makes you go all in. Love makes you voluntarily stupid. Love robs you of the humor you use to protect yourself and leaves you speechless. Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. And then it strips you down, and leaves you fully nude for all to see. ZNH
Love this quote but I can’t find it in the book…excepting the, “Lov emakes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” portion…
Hmmmm. Yeah, the only thing in ch. 13 (or in the entire book) with any portion of this the last line in the chapter” “He drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a
self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.”
The only printed location where I can find this quote as a whole is in Black Love, It’s Your Fault (2019), p. 151 (closing lines).
Beyond the above text it includes:
“… fully nude for all to see,
That’s why it’s so downright terrifying,
Falsely Yours,
Zora Neale Hurston”
In light of all that, I’m changing this over to “(Attributed)”, with these notes.
Thanks, Paul. I agree it’s a great … if not quote, than passage.
Time for another “State of the WIST” post. I last ran this report in September 2022; time flies when you’re having fun. I’ve been pretty…