Joy Harjo Quotes

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

Joy Harjo

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Quotes to Explore

• A service of worship is primarily a service to God. When we realize this and act upon it, we make it a service to men.

  

  Ralph W. Sockman
  • God
  • Men
  • Service

• Acting is something that I always wanted, but I never paid attention to the notion that it might actually work out. You have all sorts of ideas about what you want to do - at one stage, I wanted to be a jockey - but this is the one that's a big deal.

  

  Olivia Thirlby
  • Work
  • Attention
  • Ideas

• All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!

  

  T. E. Lawrence
  • World
  • Bad
  • First

• Be drawn to the visual arts for it can expand your imagination.

  

  Barbara Januszkiewicz
  • Imagination
  • Arts
  • Expand

• Know that the tattoos are all significant. They're all extremely insignificant. I can't break each one down, but it's 20 years. The first one was 21 years of age from a football teammate.

  

  Omari Hardwick
  • Age
  • Know
  • Football

• The Catholic Church is an innately conservative rock - they call themselves the 'rock of Peter' - and its resistance to change is, ironically, what has kept it constant throughout the ages.

  

  Gabriel Byrne
  • Change
  • Church
  • Rock

• Let's face it, the great comedians now that are handicapped in the looks department are tremendous writers.

  

  Jack Black
  • Great
  • Face
  • Now

• In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.

  

  Walt Whitman
  • Together
  • Happy
  • Single

• I believe people have to follow their dreams - I did.

  

  Larry Ellison
  • People
  • Believe
  • Dreams

• In the Soviet Union, no industry went under until they all did.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Industry
  • Union
  • Soviet

• I've discovered as an author that the process of writing a novel becomes harder over time, not easier. I used to think the reverse must be true, that it would be like any task, and the more I practiced, the more adept I'd become.

  

  Tawni O'Dell
  • Time
  • Writing
  • True

• I think most writers, in a sense, have this desire to disappear, to be absolutely anonymous, to be removed in some way: that comes out of the need to be a writer.

  

  Sam Shepard
  • Think
  • Desire
  • Need

• Timing has a lot to with art.

  

  LL Cool J
  • Art
  • Timing

• When Mother died I was both freed and abandoned, as are we all at this profound juncture in our lives.

  

  Rita Mae Brown
  • Mother
  • Profound
  • Died

• The air campaign is going to continue, ... The Yugoslav government hasn't done anything positive.

  

  Javier Solana
  • Government
  • Positive
  • Air Campaign

• Every single character in the world, every creature in the world has something to give and something to learn.

  

  Shailene Woodley
  • World
  • Character
  • Creature

• Little fly, thy summer's play My thoughtless hand has brushed away. Am not I a fly like thee? Or art not thou a man like me? For I dance and drink and sing, Till some blind hand shall brush my wing!

  

  William Blake
  • Art
  • Dance
  • Blind

• In living off all the reflecting light furnished by poets, the I which dreams the reverie reveals itself not as poet but as poetizing I.

  

  Gaston Bachelard
  • Light
  • Dreams
  • Poets

• Writing a song is like - you're writing a song all the time. It's just when it pops out. It's been there all the time. It's not something that suddenly you do it. It's always there. Suddenly, it's in the right mixture inside you to come out. Usually when you're writing on the piano or a guitar, you don't write in lyrics, on their own. To me it's very boring.

  

  Mick Jagger The Rolling Stones
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Song

• If an artwork never gets any attention from anybody, then obviously it's got problems. If it gains attention from a very small elite, then it's presumably doing something. Finnegans Wake gets a lot of attention from certain people who become passionate about it, who are usually very good readers in general. Although - I often talk about costs and benefits - it seems to me the costs of reading Finnegans Wake are not worth the benefits, however many there may be. And it's the same with the more arcane among poets, Zukofsky and so on.

  

  Brian Boyd
  • Problems
  • Poets
  • Artwork

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

  

  Joy Harjo
  • Inside
  • Poets
  • Poems