Quote

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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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.
Nothing
Delight
Need
Thus
Needs
Therefore
Loss
Poetry
Posses
Since
Posse
Fear
Possess
Anything
Realization

More quotes by John Cage

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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.
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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To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
John Cage
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In the dark, all cats are black.
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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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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Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.
John Cage
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What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.
John Cage
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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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Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
John Cage
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We only hear what we listen for.
John Cage
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Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living.
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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One shouldn't go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.
John Cage
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People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.
John Cage
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Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
John Cage
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Music is a means of rapid transportation.
John Cage
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Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
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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All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.
John Cage