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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.
Silence
Cannot
May
Trying
Make

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There's no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.
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To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
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It's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.
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Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
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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.
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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.
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Everyday is a beautiful day, Everything is pleasing
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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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Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
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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.
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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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An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
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My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heard
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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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Each moment presents what happens.
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My favourite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I don't hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard.
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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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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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