Joy Harjo Quotes

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.

Most people don’t know that Congo Square was originally a Muscogee ceremonial ground… in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 you play a sax, that saxophone is irreverent. It’s noisy; it’s a trickster… you cannot hide the saxophone in your hands, so it’s a good teacher.

There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.

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

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.

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.

I started writing to save my life.

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 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.

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.

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

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

I come from a long line of revolutionaries.

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

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

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

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

I believe in the sun. In the tangle of human failures of fear, greed and forgetfulness, the sun gives me clarity.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

My house is the red earth . . . .

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

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.

I chose poetry. Actually, poetry chose me.

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

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.

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.

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

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.