Quotes from Joy Harjo

Because who would believe the fantastic and terrible story of all of our survival those who were never meant to survive?

What shall I do with all this heartache?

What we haven't imagined will one day spit us out magnificent and simple. -Fury of Rain

You savored each story they told you, and remembered the way the stars entered your blood at birth.

Maybe then we will see the design of the two-minded creature And know why half the world fights righteously for greedy masters And the other half is nailing it all back together

Her escape is my own. I tell her, yes. Yes. We ride out for breath over the distance. Night air approaches, the galloping other-life. No sound. No sound.

In the United terminal in Chicago at five on a Friday afternoon The sky is breaking with rain and wind and all the flights Are delayed forever. We will never get to where we are going And there's no way back to where we've been.

What we haven't imagined will one day spit us out magnificent and simple.

Her own daughter was born, like she had been, in either place or all places, so she could leave, leap into the sound she had always heard, a voice like water, like the gods weaving against sundown in a scarlet light.

Gather strength, pull it in Be right where you are.

And we go on, keep giving birth and watch ourselves die, over and over. And the ground spinning beneath us goes on talking.

She sees Lake Michigan lapping at the shores of herself. It is a dizzy hole of water and the rich live in tall glass houses at the edge of it.

Forever will be a day like this.

These are the ones who escape after the last hurt is turned inward; they are the most dangerous ones.

If I think behind me, I might break. If I think forward, I lose now. Forever will be a day like this Strung perfectly on the necklace of days.

Every day is a reenactment of the creation story. We emerge from dense unspeakable material, through the shimmering power of dreaming stuff. This is the first world, and the last.

We tried to pretend war wasn't going to happen. Though they began building their houses all around us and demanding more. They started teaching our children their god's story, A story in which we'd always be slaves.

My ancestors include Monahwee, who was one of the leaders in the Red Stick War, which was the largest Indian uprising in history, and Osceola, who refused to sign a treaty with the United States.

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.

There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.

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

I am a member of the Muskogee people. I'm a poet, a musician, a dreamer of sorts, a questioner. Like everyone else, I'm looking for answers of some sort or the other.

I chose poetry. Actually, poetry chose me.

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.