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

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

More quotes by John Cage

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The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
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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.
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It's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.
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The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.
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No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.
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Food, one assumes, provides nourishment but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction.
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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.
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Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.
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Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
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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.
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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?
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Art is whatever you can get away with.
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There will always be critics eager to fashion opinions for the lazy and incapable.
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I want to change my way of seeing, NOT my way of feeling. I was perfectly happy about my feelings.
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When you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it.
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We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
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Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.
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Paper should be edible, nutritious. Inks used for printing or writing should have delicious flavors. Magazines or newspapers read at breakfast should be eaten for lunch. Instead of throwing one's mail in the waste-basket, it should be saved for the dinner guests.
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When I went to the analyst for a kind of preliminary meeting, he said, 'I'll be able to fix you so that you'll write much more music than you do now.' I said, 'Good heavens! I already write too much, it seems to me.' That promise of his put me off.
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