Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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.
Ideas
Everybody
Enemies
Even
Alone
Leaving
World
Start
Continue
Working
Completely
Friends
Lucky
Left
Painting
Art
Leave
Studio
Past
Enemy
Studios

More quotes by John Cage

Image
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
Image
If this word music is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.
John Cage
Image
As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
John Cage
Image
Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of it's own accord.
John Cage
Image
Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
John Cage
Image
To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
John Cage
Image
Guy Nearing told us it's a good idea when hunting mushrooms to have a pleasant goal, a waterfall for instance, and, having reached it, to return another way. When, however, we're obliged to go and come back by the same path, returning we notice mushrooms we hadn't noticed going out.
John Cage
Image
We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
John Cage
Image
In an utter emptiness anything can take place.
John Cage
Image
No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.
John Cage
Image
Each moment presents what happens.
John Cage
Image
Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music. The very practice of music is a celebration that we own nothing.
John Cage
Image
The grand thing about the human mind is that it can turn its own tables and see meaninglessness as ultimate meaning.
John Cage
Image
Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
John Cage
Image
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
Image
In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.
John Cage
Image
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
Image
Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
John Cage
Image
The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.
John Cage
Image
As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.
John Cage