Quote

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.

John Cage

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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.
Writing
Favourite
Havens
Haven
Hear
Heard
Write
Order
Music

More quotes by John Cage

Image
Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
John Cage
Image
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.
John Cage
Image
The grand thing about the human mind is that it can turn its own tables and see meaninglessness as ultimate meaning.
John Cage
Image
Now that we have everything we need, we discover that there is almost nothing that we have that we want
John Cage
Image
There's no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.
John Cage
Image
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.
John Cage
Image
Out of the work comes the work.
John Cage
Image
A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.
John Cage
Image
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.
John Cage
Image
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
Image
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.
John Cage
Image
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.
John Cage
Image
Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.
John Cage
Image
I don't need sound to talk to me.
John Cage
Image
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
Image
There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
John Cage
Image
All great art is a form of complaint
John Cage
Image
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.
John Cage
Image
Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.
John Cage
Image
Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
John Cage