Quote

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.
Study
Pencils
Write
Pointed
Ends
Studying
Important
Directly
Schoenberg
Writing
Twenty
Eraser
Years
Twenties
Erasers
Learned
Ink
Mistake
Pencil

More quotes by John Cage

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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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Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
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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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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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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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The world is no longer a romantic place some of its people still are however, and therein lies the promise. Don't let the world win.
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...we make our lives by what we love.
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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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Music is a means of rapid transportation.
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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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All great art is a form of complaint
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The world, the real is not an object. It is a process.
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Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
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If this word music is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.
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In the dark, all cats are black.
John Cage
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Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.
John Cage
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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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We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
John Cage
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Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
John Cage
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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.
John Cage