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What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.

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.
Woods
Nature
Right

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Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.
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Paper should be edible, nutritious. Inks used for printing or writing should have delicious flavors. Magazines or newspapers read at breakfast should be eaten for lunch. Instead of throwing one's mail in the waste-basket, it should be saved for the dinner guests.
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Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.
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An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
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There will always be critics eager to fashion opinions for the lazy and incapable.
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I don't need sound to talk to me.
John Cage
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It's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.
John Cage
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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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My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heard
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Now that we have everything we need, we discover that there is almost nothing that we have that we want
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In an utter emptiness anything can take place.
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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
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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.
John Cage
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The function of Art is to imitate Nature in her manner of operation. Our understanding of her manner of operation&Rdquo changes according to advances in the sciences.
John Cage
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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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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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In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.
John Cage
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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.
John Cage
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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.
John Cage
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My work became an exploration of non-intention.
John Cage