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Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.

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.
Fluent
Help
Living
Business
Helping
Art
Become
Life

More quotes by 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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The responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so that it may become attractively disinteresting.
John Cage
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One shouldn't go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.
John Cage
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Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not posses it) and thus need not fear its loss.
John Cage
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The world is no longer a romantic place some of its people still are however, and therein lies the promise. Don't let the world win.
John Cage
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If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.
John Cage
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Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right.
John Cage
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There will always be critics eager to fashion opinions for the lazy and incapable.
John Cage
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It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
John Cage
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Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
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
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There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
John Cage
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There are some good people in it, but the orchestra as a whole is equivalent to a gang bent on destruction.
John Cage
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Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.
John Cage
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We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
John Cage
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Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.
John Cage
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An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
John Cage
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Each moment presents what happens.
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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Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
John Cage