Quotes from Joy Harjo

I come from a long line of revolutionaries.

You can't look for love, or it will run away from you. But, you know, don't look for it. Don't look for it. Just go where it is and appreciate it, and, you know, it will find you.

Humans are vulnerable and rely on the kindnesses of the earth and the sun; we exist together in a sacred field of meaning.

I've been present at birth, and death is just as present and in equal balance. And I've been present at death, and birth is just as present, again in equal balance.

When explorers first encountered my people, they called us heathens, sun worshippers. They didn't understand that the sun is a relative and illuminates our path on this earth.

Remember you are this universe and this universe is you.

I came into poetry feeling as though, on some level, these words were not just mine but my grandparents', their parents'.

Alive. This music rocks me. I drive the interstate, watch faces come and go on either side. I am free to be sung to; I am free to sing. This woman can cross any line.

A family is essentially a field of stories, each intricately connected. Death does not sever the connection; rather, the story expands as it continues unwinding inter-dimensionally

Though we have instructions and a map buried in our hearts when we enter this world, nothing quite prepares us for the abrupt shift to the breathing realm.

I wanted to see everything. It was around the time I acquired language, or even before that time, when something happened that changed my relationship to the spin of the world. My concept of language, of what was possible with music was changed by this revelatory moment. It changed even the way I look at the sun.

When Sun leaves at dusk, it makes a doorway. We have access to ancestors, to eternity. Breathe out. Ask for forgiveness. Let all hurts and failures go. Let them go.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame. Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction. Ask for forgiveness. Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

In a way, we [poets] are listeners. I go to poetry because I don't have the words." —

In the end, we must each tend to our own gulfs of sadness, though others can assist us with kindness, food, good words, and music. Our human tendency is to fill these holes with distractions like shopping and fast romance, or with drugs and alcohol.

We were never perfect. Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was once a star and made the same mistakes as humans. We might make them again, she said. Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end. You must make your own map.

Once there were songs for everything, Songs for planting, for growing, for harvesting, For eating, getting drunk, falling asleep, For sunrise, birth, mind-break, and war. For death (those are the heaviest songs and they Have to be pried from the earth with shovels of grief). Now all we hear are falling-in-love songs and Falling apart after falling in love songs.

and this ache this trembling ache haunts me endlessly like you.

I walk in and out of several worlds every day.

I thought my dance alone through worlds of odd and eccentric planets that no one else knew would sustain me.

Nobody goes anywhere though we are always leaving and returning. It's a ceremony. Sunrise occurs everywhere, in lizard time, human time, or a fern uncurling time.

No. I was not okay. And neither was James Baldwin though his essays Were perfect spinning platters of comprehension of the fight To assert humanness in a black and white world.

I release you, fear, because you hold these scenes in front of me and I was born with eyes that can never close.

I can't do anything but talk to the wind, to the moon but cry out goddamn goddamn to stones and to other deathless voices that I hope will carry us all through.