Joy Kogawa Quotes

#1. From my years of teaching I know it's the children who say nothing who are in trouble more than the ones who complain.

Joy Kogawa

#2. Don't deny the past. Remember everything. If you're bitter, be bitter. Cry it out! Scream! Denial is gangrene.

Joy Kogawa

#3. Language to me is a tool a very clumsy tool. And words are garden tools with which to till the soil of one's life.

Joy Kogawa

#4. Poetry is a kind of gasp, and there it is, a spark on the page. Fiction, on the other hand, is like swamp fire.

Joy Kogawa

#5. Life is so short," I said sighing, "the past so long. Shouldn't we turn the page and move on?"
"The past is the future," Aunt Emily shot back

Joy Kogawa

#6. Once I came across two ideographs for the word "love." The first contained the root words "heart" and "hand" and "action"-love as hands and heart in action together. The other ideograph, for "passionate love," was formed of "heart," "to tell," and "a long thread.

Joy Kogawa

#7. In a time like this, let us trust in God even more. To trust when life is easy is no trust.

Joy Kogawa

#8. People who talk a lot about their victimization make me uncomfortable. It's as if they use their suffering as weapons or badges of some kind.

Joy Kogawa