Joy Harjo Quotes

Quotes about:

• Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their families, their histories too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems.

  Joy Harjo

  Animal, Tree, Alive

  Joy Harjo (2004). “How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2002”, p.42, W. W. Norton & Company

  33 Copy quote

• There is no separation. We are all from the same place. As long as there is respect and acknowledgement of connections, things continue working. When that stops we all die.

  Joy Harjo

  Long, Connections, Separation

  30 Copy quote

• If you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you. Or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned.

  Joy Harjo

  Sadness, Poetry, Answers

  41 Copy quote

• Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.

  Joy Harjo

  Inspirational, Life, Equality

  "Remember". Poem by Joy Harjo, 1981.

  23 Copy quote

• At least I've had to come to that in my life, to realize that this stuff called failure, this stuff, this debris of historical trauma, family trauma, you know, stuff that can kill your spirit, is actually raw material to make things with and to build a bridge. You can use those materials to build a bridge over that which would destroy you.

  Joy Harjo

  Bridges, Historical, Stuff

  "Joy Harjo's 'Crazy Brave' Path To Finding Her Voice". "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. July 9, 2012.

  38 Copy quote

• True power does not amass through the pain and suffering of others.

  Joy Harjo

  Inspirational, Pain, Suffering Of Others

  19 Copy quote

• There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.

  Joy Harjo

  Mistake

  Joy Harjo (2001). “A Map to the Next World: Poems and Tales”, p.81, W. W. Norton & Company

  19 Copy quote

• I can hear the sizzle of newborn stars, and know anything of meaning, of the fierce magic emerging here. I am witness to flexible eternity, the evolving past, and I know we will live forever, as dust or breath in the face of stars, in the shifting pattern of winds.

  Joy Harjo

  Stars, Past, Dust

  24 Copy quote

• Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you.

  Joy Harjo

  Remember, Universe

  11 Copy quote

• My generation is now the door to memory. That is why I am remembering.

  Joy Harjo

  Memories, Doors, Generations

  48 Copy quote

• I've always had a theory that some of us are born with nerve endings longer than our bodies

  Joy Harjo

  Funny, Humorous, Musician

  Joy Harjo (1990). “In Mad Love and War”, p.21, Wesleyan University Press

  57 Copy quote

• A story matrix connects all of us.
  There are rules, processes, and circles of responsibility in this world. And the story begins exactly where it is supposed to begin. We cannot skip any part.

  Joy Harjo

  Responsibility, Circles, Stories

  34 Copy quote

• Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

  Joy Harjo

  Sweet, Laughing, Kitchen

  "The Woman Who Fell From the Sky". Book by Joy Harjo, www.npr.org. 1994.

  28 Copy quote

• I know I walk in and out of several worlds each day.

  Joy Harjo

  Each Day, World, Walks

  7 Copy quote

• The saxophone is so human. Its tendency is to be rowdy, edgy, talk too loud, bump into people, say the wrong words at the wrong time, but then, you take a breath all the way from the center of the earth and blow. All that heartache is forgiven. All that love we humans carry makes a sweet, deep sound and we fly a little.

  Joy Harjo

  Sweet, Blow, People

  FaceBook post by Joy Harjo from Mar 05, 2013

  52 Copy quote

• It's important as a writer to do my art well and do it in a way that is powerful and beautiful and meaningful, so that my work regenerates the people, certainly Indian people, and the earth and the sun. And in that way we all continue forever.

  Joy Harjo

  Beautiful, Meaningful, Art

  18 Copy quote

• It is memory that provides the heart with impetus, fuels the brain, and propels the corn plant from seed to fruit.

  Joy Harjo

  Memories, Heart, Brain

  13 Copy quote

• I was born with eyes that can never close.

  Joy Harjo

  Eye, Born

  "Crazy Brave: A Memoir". Book by Joy Harjo, www.npr.org. July 9, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• But come here, Fear. / I am alive! / And you are so afraid / of dying.

  Joy Harjo

  Dying, Alive, I Am Alive

  "I Give You Back". Poem by Joy Harjo,

  22 Copy quote

• I believe that poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work.

  Joy Harjo

  Believe, Poetry, I Believe

  Joy Harjo, Laura Coltelli (1996). “The spiral of memory: interviews”, Univ of Michigan Pr

  4 Copy quote

• I have more questions than answers in this world as do most poets and writers. The field of memory we exist in is absolutely encompassing and is both a question and answer. It is memory that provides the heart with impetus, fuels the brain, and propels the corn plant from seed to fruit.

  Joy Harjo

  Memories, Heart, Brain

  12 Copy quote

• My father told me that some voices are so true they can be used as weapons, can maneuver the weather, change time. He said that a voice that powerful can walk away from the singer if it is shamed. After my father left us, I learned that some voices can deceive you. There is a top layer and there is a bottom, and they don't match.

  Joy Harjo

  Powerful, Father, Weather

  14 Copy quote

• Someone accompanies every soul from the other side when it enters this place. Usually it is an ancestor with whom that child shares traits and gifts

  Joy Harjo

  Children, Soul, Sides

  14 Copy quote

• If we cry more tears we will ruin the land with salt; instead let's praise that which would distract us with despair. Make a song for death, a song for yellow teeth and bad breath

  Joy Harjo

  Song, Land, Yellow

  17 Copy quote

• I spoke with the crows before leaving for Los Angeles. They were the resident storytellers whose strident and insistent voices added the necessary dissonance for color. They had cousins in California, and gave me their names and addresses, told me to look them up. They warned me, too, what they had heard about attitude there. And they were right. Attitude was thick, hung from the would-be's and has-beens and think-they-ares, so thick that I figured it was the major source of the smog.

  Joy Harjo

  Cousin, Attitude, Thinking

  Joy Harjo (2004). “How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2002”, p.144, W. W. Norton & Company

  7 Copy quote

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