John Luther Adams quotes

“As a composer, I believe that music has the power to inspire a renewal of human consciousness, culture, and politics. And yet I refuse to make political art. More often than not political art fails as politics, and all too often it fails as art. To reach its fullest power, to be most moving and most fully useful to us, art must be itself.”
-- John Luther Adams

Source : "Making Music in the Anthropocene". www.slate.com. February 24, 2015.

#Art Quotes #Believe Quotes #Moving Quotes

“My hope is that the music creates a strange, beautiful, overwhelming - sometimes even frightening - landscape, and invites you to get lost in it.”
-- John Luther Adams

#Beautiful Quotes #Landscape Quotes #Strange Quotes

“Life on this earth first emerged from the sea. As the polar ice melts and sea level rises, we humans find ourselves facing the prospect that once again we may quite literally become ocean.”
-- John Luther Adams

Source : "Letter from the Archive: John Luther Adams" by Joshua Rothman, www.newyorker.com. April 18, 2014.

#Ocean Quotes #Ice Quotes #Sea Quotes

“Where the eye divides, the ear connects.”
-- John Luther Adams

Source : John Luther Adams (2004). “Winter Music: Composing the North”, p.164, Wesleyan University Press

#Eye Quotes #Ears Quotes

“I’ve come to believe that, fundamentally, art matters more than politics.”
-- John Luther Adams

#Art Quotes #Believe Quotes #Matter Quotes

“I’ve come to believe that, fundamentally, art matters more than politics.”
-- John Luther Adams

#Art Quotes #Believe Quotes #Matter Quotes

“The truth and the facts aren't necessarily the same thing. Telling the truth is the object of all art; facts are what the unimaginative have instead of ideas.”

Source : A. A. Gill (2008). “Paper view: the best of the Sunday Times television reviews”, Orion Pub Co

“Teachers believe they have a gift for giving; it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building.”

Source : A. Bartlett Giamatti (1981). “The University and the Public Interest”, Atheneum Books

“Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.”

Source : FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from Jun 30, 2010

“To Lawren Harris art was almost a mission. He believed that a country which ignored the arts left no record of itself worth preserving.”

“Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

“I believe in instinct, not reason. When reason is right, nine times out of ten it is impotent, and when it prevails, nine times out of ten it is wrong.”

“I was a narrative historian, believing more and more as I matured that the first function of the historian was to answer the child's question, "What happened next?”

“We are all mediums for our own basic truths. All we really have in life is the primal force that moves us through our days--our unvarnished, untutored, ever-present, inborn agency.”

Source : "The Silent Wife".

“The language itself is what gets me interested in writing. It's weird to me that words exist. Never a dull moment with words. They're a layer between our minds and the physical reality around us, obviously, but the layer seems like it's always in flux, like an asteroid belt, constantly moving.”

Source : "Cartographer of Word Galaxies". The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. September 24, 2013.

“Blaire, This teardrop represents many things. The tears I know you’ve shed over holding your mother’s piece of satin. The tears you’ve shed over each loss you’ve experienced. But it also represents the tears we’ve both shed as we’ve felt the little life inside you begin to move. The tears I’ve shed over the fact I’ve been given someone like you to love. I never imagined anyone like you Blaire. But every time I think about forever with you I’m humbled that you chose me. This is your something blue. I love you, Rush”