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Beware of losing what isn't in your head.

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.
Beware
Losing
Head

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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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We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
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The world is teeming anything can happen.
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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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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.
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An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
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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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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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My work became an exploration of non-intention.
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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.
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Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.
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Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.
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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 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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Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
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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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There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
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Music is a means of rapid transportation.
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To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
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For myself and my own experience now, I don't really need any music. I have enough to listen to with just the sounds of the environment. I listen to the sounds of 6th avenue.
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