Joy Kogawa quotes:

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.

Fiction, on the other hand, is like swamp fire.

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

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.