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If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.
John Cage
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John Cage
Age: 79 †
Born: 1912
Born: September 5
Died: 1992
Died: August 2
Composer
Illustrator
Music Theorist
Musician
Musicologist
Painter
Philosopher
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
LA
California
John Milton Cage Jr.
John Milton Cage
Jr.
John Milton
Jr. Cage
J. C.
Inspirational
Discovers
Two
Sixteen
Stills
Thirty
Still
Eventually
Music
Boring
Trying
Eight
Something
Minutes
Four
More quotes by John Cage
Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.
John Cage
We only hear what we listen for.
John Cage
One day when I was studying with Schoenberg, he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said, 'This end is more important than the other.' After twenty years I learned to write directly in ink.
John Cage
Why do you not do as I do? Letting go of your thoughts as though they were the cold ashes of a long dead fire?
John Cage
What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.
John Cage
A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.
John Cage
We're breaking all of the rules, even our own rules, and how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.
John Cage
It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
John Cage
For myself and my own experience now, I don't really need any music. I have enough to listen to with just the sounds of the environment. I listen to the sounds of 6th avenue.
John Cage
In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.
John Cage
Look at everything. Don't close your eyes to the world around you. Look and become curious and interested in what there is to see.
John Cage
Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.
John Cage
There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
John Cage
If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.
John Cage
...we make our lives by what we love.
John Cage
Each moment presents what happens.
John Cage
The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
John Cage
The attitude I take is that everyday life is more interesting than forms of celebration, when we become aware of it. That when is when our intentions go down to zero. Then suddenly you notice that the world is magical.
John Cage
In the nature of the use of chance operations is the belief that all answers answer all questions.
John Cage
When you start working, everybody is in your studio- the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas- all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.
John Cage
