Top 70 Joy Harjo Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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

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

— Joy Harjo

3. “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

4. “Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.”

— Joy Harjo

5. “There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.”

— Joy Harjo

6. “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

7. “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

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

— Joy Harjo

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

— Joy Harjo

10. “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

11. “Remember the earth whose skin you are: red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth brown earth, we are earth. Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems.”

— Joy Harjo

12. “All cultures and peoples turn to poetry during times of celebration, transformation and challenge – those times when ordinary language cannot carry meaning beyond our understanding.”

— Joy Harjo

13. “Be who you are, even if it kills you. It will. Over and over again. Even as you live.”

— Joy Harjo

14. “I was born with eyes that can never close...”

— Joy Harjo

15. “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

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

— Joy Harjo

17. “We are all here to serve each other. At some point we have to understand that we do not need to carry a story that is unbearable. We can observe the story, which is mental; feel the story, which is physical; let the story go, which is emotional; then forgive the story, which is spiritual, after which we use the materials of it to build a house of knowledge.”

— Joy Harjo

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

— Joy Harjo

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

— Joy Harjo

20. “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

21. “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. This legacy either will give those who follow us joy on their road or will give them sorrow.”

— Joy Harjo

22. “I came into poetry feeling as though, on some level, these words were not just mine but my grandparents’, their parents’.”

— Joy Harjo

23. “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

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

— Joy Harjo

25. “In the end, we must each tend to our own gulfs of sadness, though others can assist us with kindness, food, good words, and music. Our human tendency is to fill these holes with distractions like shopping and fast romance, or with drugs and alcohol.”

— Joy Harjo

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

— Joy Harjo

27. “It was the spirit of poetry who reached out and found me as I stood there at the doorway between panic and love.”

— Joy Harjo

28. “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.”

— Joy Harjo

29. “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

30. “European and American settlers soon took over the lands that were established for settlement of eastern tribes in what became known as Indian Territory. The Christian god gave them authority. Yet everyone wanted the same thing: land, peace, a place to make a home, cook, fall in love, make children and music.”

— Joy Harjo

31. “Nothing ever stays the same, whether it be poems or humans.”

— Joy Harjo

32. “Poetry keeps the door open to awe and ensures that we will find our way through the broken heart field of wars, losses and betrayals to understanding, compassion and gathering together.”

— Joy Harjo

33. “Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.”

— Joy Harjo

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

— Joy Harjo

35. “The heart is a fist. It pockets prayer or holds rage.”

— Joy Harjo

36. “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

37. “I understood why women went back to their abusers. The monster wasn’t your real husband, he was a bad dream – an alien of sorts – who took over the spirit of your beloved one. He entered and left your husband. It was your real love you welcomed back in.”

— Joy Harjo

38. “Though we have instructions and a map buried in our hearts when we enter this world, nothing quite prepares us for the abrupt shift to the breathing realm.”

— Joy Harjo

39. “When Sun leaves at dusk, it makes a doorway. We have access to ancestors, to eternity. Breathe out. Ask for forgiveness. Let all hurts and failures go. Let them go.”

— Joy Harjo

40. “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

41. “Cut the ties you have to failure and shame. Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction. Ask for forgiveness. Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.”

— Joy Harjo

42. “Once I traveled far above the earth. This beloved planet we call home was covered with an elastic web of light. I watched in awe as it shimmered, stretched, dimmed, and shined, shaped by the collective effort of all life within it. Dissonance attracted more dissonance. Harmony attracted harmony. I saw revolutions, droughts, famines, and the births of new nations. The most humble kindnesses made the brightest lights. Nothing was wasted.”

— Joy Harjo

43. “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

44. “And, Wind, I am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.”

— Joy Harjo

45. “Within a few generations we had gone from being nearly one hundred percent of the population of this continent to less than one-half of one percent. We were all haunted.”

— Joy Harjo

46. “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

47. “I have forgotten the reason, forgive me. I have forgotten my name in the language I was born to, forgive me.”

— Joy Harjo

48. “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

49. “I have a cat, a stripedy cat with tickling whiskers and green electric eyes. She has the softest fur in the world. When I pet her she purrs as if she has a drum near her heart.”

— Joy Harjo

50. “The songs of the guardians of silence are the most powerful –.”

— Joy Harjo