Joy Harjo Quotes

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

A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is apanther poised in a cypress tree about to jump.The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart chargedby four winds of four directions.The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspokentears of a few hundred human years, storms that will breakwhat has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch afew miles away.He hears the death song of his approaching

~ 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

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

~ Joy Harjo

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

~ Joy Harjo

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

~ 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

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

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