Quote Origin: There Are Years That Ask Questions and Years That Answer

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Zora Neale Hurston? Apocryphal?

Multi-colored question marks from Pixabay

Question for Quote Investigator: A new year brings uncertainties and choices. The uncertainties will be resolved in a future year. A prominent literary figure once wrote:

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

This statement has been attributed to U.S. writer Zora Neale Hurston. Would you please help me to find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1937 Zora Neale Hurston published the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” which included the following passage. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1

There are years that ask questions and years that answer. Janie had had no chance to know things, so she had to ask. Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In 1986 a collection of essays about Hurston included a chapter titled “Ships at a Distance: The Meaning of Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Robert Bone which contained a discussion of the character Janie within Hurston’s novel.2

Against her better judgment, therefore, Janie acquiesces in an early marriage with Logan Killicks, a hard-working farmer considerably older than herself.

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer: Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?” Janie soon realizes her mistake. She aspires to more than sixty acres and an organ in the parlor, and refuses to barter her fulfillment as a woman in exchange for property rights . . .

In 1996 “The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women” compiled by Rosalie Maggio included this entry:3

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

In 2008 the quotation appeared in “I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like: A Comprehensive Compilation of History’s Greatest Metaphors, Analogies, and Similes” edited by Mardy Grothe.4

In 2013 the quotation appeared in “Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations” edited by Retha Powers.5

In conclusion, Zora Neale Hurston deserves credit for this statement. She wrote it in her novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” in 1937.

Image Notes: Public domain illustration of multi-colored question marks from geralt at Pixabay. The image has been cropped and resized.

Acknowledgement: Great thanks to the anonymous person whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.

  1. 1978 (Copyright 1937), Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel by Zora Neale Hurston, Chapter 3, Quote Page 38, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  2. 1986, Zora Neale Hurston, Edited by Harold Bloom (Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University), Chapter: Ships at a Distance: The Meaning of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Robert Bone, Start Page 15, Quote Page 17, Chelsea House Publishers, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  3. 1996 Copyright, The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women, Compiled by Rosalie Maggio, Topic: Years, Quote Page 778, Column 1, Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  4. 2008, I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like: A Comprehensive Compilation of History’s Greatest Metaphors, Analogies, and Similes, Edited by Mardy Grothe, Chapter 2: Reserved Seats at a Banquet of Consequences, Quote Page 50, Collins: An Imprint of HarperCollins, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  5. 2013, Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations, General Editor: Retha Powers, Section: Zora Neale Hurston 1891-1960, Quote Page 180, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
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