Quote

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.

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.
Food
Improve
Assumes
Small
Assuming
Nourishment
Culture
Appearance
Amounts
Cooking
Delay
Fully
Culinary
Aware
Added
Americans
Provides
Amount
Poison
Putrefaction

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?
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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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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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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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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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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.
John Cage
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Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
John Cage
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If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.
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.
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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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Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
John Cage
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Each moment presents what happens.
John Cage
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Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
John Cage
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All great art is a form of complaint
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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In an utter emptiness anything can take place.
John Cage
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The attitude I take is that everyday life is more interesting than forms of celebration, when we become aware of it. That when is when our intentions go down to zero. Then suddenly you notice that the world is magical.
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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The Indians long ago knew that music was going on permanently and that hearing it was like looking out a window at a landscape which didn't stop when one turned away.
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