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In the dark, all cats are black.

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.
Cats
Cat
Dark
Black

More quotes by John Cage

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So somebody has talent? So what? Dime a dozen. And we're overpopulated. Actually we have more food than we have people and more art. We've gotten to the point of burning food. When will we begin to burn our art?
John Cage
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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
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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
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Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.
John Cage
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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
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I don't need sound to talk to me.
John Cage
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There's no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.
John Cage
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I want to change my way of seeing, NOT my way of feeling. I was perfectly happy about my feelings.
John Cage
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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
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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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My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heard
John Cage
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In the nature of the use of chance operations is the belief that all answers answer all questions.
John Cage
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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
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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
John Cage
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When we separate music from life we get is art.
John Cage
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Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.
John Cage
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Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
John Cage
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There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
John Cage
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The function of Art is to imitate Nature in her manner of operation. Our understanding of her manner of operation&Rdquo changes according to advances in the sciences.
John Cage
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Artists talk a lot about freedom. So, recalling the expression free as a bird, Morton Feldman went to a park one day and spent some time watching our feathered friends. When he came back, he said, You know? They're not free: they're fighting over bits of food.
John Cage