Quotes from Joy Harjo

The creative act amazes me. Whether it's poetry, whether it's music, it's an amazing process, and it has something to do with bringing forth the old out into the world to create and to bring forth that which will rejuvenate.

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

Sometimes, I think, in order to get to something that we really want or we really love or something that needs to be realized, that we're tested.

I don't see the desert as barren at all; I see it as full and ripe. It doesn't need to be flattered with rain. It certainly needs rain, but it does with what it has, and creates amazing beauty.

I hear from my Inuit and Yupik relatives up north that everything has changed. It's so hot; there is not enough winter. Animals are confused. Ice is melting.

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.

I love the sound of the saxophone. It became my singing voice, and it sounds so human. The saxophone could carry the words past the border of words. It can carry it a little bit farther.

You just go where poetry is, whether it's in your heart or your mind or in books or in places where there's live poetry or recordings.

My sister accommodates me, never reproaches me with her doctrine, never tries to change me. She accepts and loves me, despite our differences.

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

I started writing to save my life.

We're all given something to do. And when we don't follow what we're supposed to do, we always know when we're off track.

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

There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.

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

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

It's possible to understand the world from studying a leaf. You can comprehend the laws of aerodynamics, mathematics, poetry and biology through the complex beauty of such a perfect structure. It's also possible to travel the whole globe and learn nothing.

I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear. I release you. You were my beloved and hate twin, but now, I don't know you as myself

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.

I was born with eyes that can never close...

All acts of kindness are lights in the war for justice.

She exists in me now, just as I will and already do within my grandchildren. No one ever truly dies. The desires of our hearts make a path. We create legacy with our thoughts and dreams.

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.

I could hear my abandoned dreams making a racket in my soul.