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I always play or perform music with my poetry. When poetry came into the world, it did not arrive by itself, but it came with music and dance.

— Joy Harjo The First Native American U.S. Poet Laureate on How Poetry Can Counter Hate” in Time Magazine (2019)

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More quotes by Joy Harjo

To find ourselves spoken for in art gives dignity to our pain, our anger, our losses.

We are story gatherers. That's what we humans do.

The most powerful poetry is birthed through cracks in history, through what is broken and unseen.

Catching the Light (2022)

America has always been multicultural, before the term became ubiquitous, before colonization, and it will be after.

An Interview with Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate” in Poets.org (2019)

When she broke on Earth, the light in her was not broken. We cannot break light, nor can we destroy it.

Catching the Light (2022)

All Joy Harjo quotes →

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The emphasis of study upon a particular aspect of music is in itself ideological because it contains implications about the music's value.

Lucy Green

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Thomas Carlyle Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

Eduard Hanslick

Above the pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges.

François Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Joy Harjo (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.