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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.
May
Trying
Make
Silence
Cannot

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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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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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There will always be critics eager to fashion opinions for the lazy and incapable.
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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.
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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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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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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.
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The world is teeming anything can happen.
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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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Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.
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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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Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right.
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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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Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
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Each moment presents what happens.
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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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It is not futile to do what we do. We wake up with energy and we do something. And we make, of course, failures and we make mistakes, but we sometimes get glimpses of what we might do next.
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An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
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If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.
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