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Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.

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.
Cannot
May
Trying
Make
Silence

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If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.
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What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.
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The responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so that it may become attractively disinteresting.
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In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.
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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.
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To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
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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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It's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.
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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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The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.
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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.
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We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
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Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
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Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.
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Out of the work comes the work.
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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.
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One shouldn't go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.
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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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What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.
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In an utter emptiness anything can take place.
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