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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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The responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so that it may become attractively disinteresting.
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Guy Nearing told us it's a good idea when hunting mushrooms to have a pleasant goal, a waterfall for instance, and, having reached it, to return another way. When, however, we're obliged to go and come back by the same path, returning we notice mushrooms we hadn't noticed going out.
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We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
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There are some good people in it, but the orchestra as a whole is equivalent to a gang bent on destruction.
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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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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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The grand thing about the human mind is that it can turn its own tables and see meaninglessness as ultimate meaning.
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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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Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.
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A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.
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Why do you not do as I do? Letting go of your thoughts as though they were the cold ashes of a long dead fire?
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No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.
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The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
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Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.
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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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Music is a means of rapid transportation.
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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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I don't need sound to talk to me.
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If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.
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I want to change my way of seeing, NOT my way of feeling. I was perfectly happy about my feelings.
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