“The Inuit have a particular kind of person, an isumataq. “An isumataq is not an elder; an isumataq is a person who creates the atmosphere, or the place, within which wisdom may reveal itself. I think Barry (Lopez) was absolutely an isumataq. And that’s what I’m looking for in my own work, and have been looking for all my life. It’s not because I think I know anything. I don’t. I’m probably more clueless than the next person. It’s precisely because I don’t know, that I do what I do.” John Luther Adams in NYT 3/30/23

 “When I’m photographing in clear-cuts, I know that what has brought me there is a sense of the world coming apart...But after I’ve been there long enough to get over my shock at the violence, after I’ve been working an hour or two and am absorbed in the structure of things as they appear in the finder, I’m not thinking only about the disaster. I’m discovering things in sunlight. You can stand in the most hopeless place, and if it’s in daylight you can experience moments that are right, that are whole.”- 1981, Robert Adams photographer

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."
Douglas Adams

"I never if I can help it get into the specifics of songs and their meanings. If you're a songwriter, and your idea is that your songs are helpful to yourself and others, they sort of operate on this sense of mystery. They don't function if they are explained; it puts out the fire." Ryan Adams in nyt interview 10/11/11

"I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic."
Abigail Adams