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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.

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.
Promise
Writing
Preliminary
Much
Already
Analyst
Kind
Went
Analysts
Good
Heaven
Psychoanalysis
Write
Heavens
Seems
Meeting
Able
Meetings
Music

More quotes by John Cage

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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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The Indians long ago knew that music was going on permanently and that hearing it was like looking out a window at a landscape which didn't stop when one turned away.
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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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Out of the work comes the work.
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Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not posses it) and thus need not fear its loss.
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Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living.
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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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Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
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There was a German philosopher who is very well known, his name was Immanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that don’t have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Don’t have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure.
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What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.
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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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Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.
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Art is whatever you can get away with.
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The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
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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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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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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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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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Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.
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No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.
John Cage