Joy Harjo Quotes & Sayings

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

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. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

I started writing to save my life. — Joy Harjo

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

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. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

I spoke with the crows before leaving for Los Angeles. They were the resident storytellers whose strident and insistent voices added the necessary dissonance for color. They had cousins in California, and gave me their names and addresses, told me to look them up. They warned me, too, what they had heard about attitude there. And they were right. Attitude was thick, hung from the would-be's and has-beens and think-they-ares, so thick that I figured it was the major source of the smog. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

This morning when I looked out the roof window
before dawn and a few stars were still caught
in the fragile weft of ebony night
I was overwhelmed. I sang the song Louis taught me:
a song to call the deer in Creek, when hunting,
and I am certainly hunting something as magic as deer
in this city far from the hammock of my mother's belly.
It works, of course, and deer came into this room
and wondered at finding themselves
in a house near downtown Denver.
Now the deer and I are trying to figure out a song
to get them back, to get all of us back,
because if it works I'm going with them.
And it's too early to call Louis
and nearly too late to go home.
[from poem, "Song for the Deer and Myself to Return On"] — Joy Harjo

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

How do I say it? In this language there are no words for how the real world collapses. I could say it in my own and the sacred mounds would come into focus, but I couldn't take it in this dingy envelope. So I look at the stars in this strange city, frozen to the back of the sky, the only promises that ever make sense. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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

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

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 — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

When I began to listen to poetry, it's when I began to listen to the stones, and I began to listen to what the clouds had to say, and I began to listen to others. And I think, most importantly for all of us, then you begin to learn to listen to the soul, the soul of yourself in here, which is also the soul of everyone else. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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 — Joy Harjo

Most people don't know that Congo Square was originally a Muscogee ceremonial ground ... in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you. — Joy Harjo

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

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. — Joy Harjo

But come here, Fear. / I am alive! / And you are so afraid / of dying. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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

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

[...] my father staggering in drunk, beating my mother, the shame and hate in him burning, burning. Then he'd hit my brothers. And then me whom it was said he loved most. He'd save me for last, when his anger was ashes, when the fire was hottest. And then he's hold me, 'Sugar, sugar', he's croon, the tears so thick they made a lake on the linoleum floor. — Joy Harjo

A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a
panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump.
The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart charged
by four winds of four directions.
The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspoken
tears of a few hundred human years, storms that will break
what has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch a
few miles away.
He hears the death song of his approaching prey:
I will always love you, sunrise.
I belong to the black cat with fire green eyes.
There, in the cypress tree near the morning star. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you
And know there is more
That you can't see, can't hear
Can't know except in moments
Steadly growing, and in languages
That aren't always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

I lay my body down in another city, another hotel room. Once Louis Armstrong and his band stayed here. Later the hotel fell to trash. New money resurrected it. Under the red moon of justice, I dream with the king of jazz. — Joy Harjo

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

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

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. — Joy Harjo

I was born with eyes that can never close... — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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

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. — Joy Harjo

I come from a long line of revolutionaries. — Joy Harjo

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

I walk in and out of several worlds every day. — Joy Harjo

At least I've had to come to that in my life, to realize that this stuff called failure, this stuff, this debris of historical trauma, family trauma, you know, stuff that can kill your spirit, is actually raw material to make things with and to build a bridge. You can use those materials to build a bridge over that which would destroy you. — Joy Harjo

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. — 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. — Joy Harjo

The woman hanging from the 13th floor window on the east side of Chicago is not alone ... She is all the women of the apartment building who stand watching her, watching themselves. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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 — Joy Harjo

I believe that poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work. — Joy Harjo

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

My house is the red earth ... — Joy Harjo

She had horses who were the blue air of the sky. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

There is no poetry where there are no mistakes. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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

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. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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

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. — Joy Harjo

Remember that you are all people and that all people are you. — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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 — Joy Harjo

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. — Joy Harjo

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