Quotes from Joy Harjo

Bless the poets, the workers for justice, the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache, the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh meaning—We will all make it through, despite politics and wars, despite failures and misunderstandings. There is only love.

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

Be who you are, even if it kills you. It will. Over and over again. Even as you live. Break my heart, why don't you?

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

Because Music is a language that lives in the spiritual realms, we can hear it, we can notate it and create it, but we cannot hold it in our hands

I sit up in the dark drenched in longing. / I am carrying over a thousand names for blue that I didn't have at dusk.

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.

We are all here to serve each other. At some point we have to understand that we do not need to carry a story that is unbearable. We can observe the story, which is mental; feel the story, which is physical; let the story go, which is emotional; then forgive the story, which is spiritual, after which we use the materials of it to build a house of knowledge.

And whom do I call my enemy? An enemy must be worthy of engagement. I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking. It's the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind. The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun. It sees and knows everything. It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing. The door to the mind should only open from the heart. An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.

I listen to the gunfire we cannot hear, and begin this journey with the light of knowing the root of my own furious love.

Those of fire move about the earth with inspiration and purpose. They are creative, and can consume and be consumed by their desires [...] My father-to-be was of the water and could not find a hold in the banks of earthiness. Water people can easily get lost.

The heart is a fist. It pockets prayer or holds rage.

In Isleta the rainbow was a crack in the universe. We saw the barest of all life that is possible. Bright horses rolled over and over the dusking sky.

You're coming with me, poor thing. You don't know how to listen. You don't know how to speak. You don't know how to sing. I will teach you." I followed poetry.

I am a star falling from the night sky I need you to catch me I am a rainbow lifting from a dark cloud I need you to see me

I don't like this romanticization of Indian people in which Indian people are looked at as spiritual saviors, as people who have always taken care of the land. We're human beings. But I think different cultures have developed different aspects of humanness.

My mother wrote lyrics and sang but was overtaken by life with four children and worked.

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.

I never fit in. Everyone knew my dad was Indian. I was half-Indian.

The homeland affects you directly: it affects your body; it affects the collective mind and the collective heart and the collective spirit.

The radio is playing jazz, and I listen to the sound of the trumpet playing a solo until I become that sound.

It took me 14 years to write 'Crazy Brave' because I kept changing the form and I also kept running away from the story. I said I don't really want to write about myself. But it's about writing about memory.

I've always loved the desert. I've spent most of my life in the Southwest. It's certainly influenced my work. I used to dream about it when I was young.

Bottom line, I have to follow what my soul says, or my spirit. And my spirit said that poetry and the arts should be without borders, should be without political borders.