Joy Harjo Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.

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

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

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

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

My house is the red earth . . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 was born with eyes that can never close.

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

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

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

I walk in and out of several worlds every day.

She had horses who were the blue air of the sky.