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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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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.
Learned
Ink
Mistake
Pencil
Study
Pencils
Write
Pointed
Ends
Studying
Important
Directly
Schoenberg
Writing
Twenty
Eraser
Years
Twenties
Erasers
More quotes by John Cage
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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The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
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To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
John Cage
Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.
John Cage
The grand thing about the human mind is that it can turn its own tables and see meaninglessness as ultimate meaning.
John Cage
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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Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.
John Cage
In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.
John Cage
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
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
Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
John Cage
Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of it's own accord.
John Cage
In the dark, all cats are black.
John Cage
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
There are some good people in it, but the orchestra as a whole is equivalent to a gang bent on destruction.
John Cage
Now that we have everything we need, we discover that there is almost nothing that we have that we want
John Cage
Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.
John Cage
A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.
John Cage
If this word music is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.
John Cage
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.
John Cage