John Cage Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of 'culture.'

  John Cage

  Mean, Listening, Acquisition

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.78, Wesleyan University Press

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• A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.

  John Cage

  Rain, Mushrooms, Meals

  John Cage (2010). “A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings”, p.60, Wesleyan University Press

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• Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.

  John Cage

  Art, Helping, Fluent

  John Cage (1970). “John Cage”

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• People who aren't artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don't have time to be inspired.

  John Cage

  Art, Inspiration, People

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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

  Music, Meaningful, Organization

  John Cage (2011). “Silence: Lectures and Writings, 50th Anniversary Edition”, Wesleyan University Press

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• A 'mistake' is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is.

  John Cage

  Music, Mistake, Happens

  Pierre Boulez, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, John Cage, Robert Samuels (1995). “The Boulez-Cage Correspondence”, p.107, Cambridge University Press

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• Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.

  John Cage

  Sound, Excellent, Heard

  John Cage, James Joyce (1982). “Roaratorio: ein irischer Circus über Finnegans wake”, Athenaum

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• A mind that is interested in changing...is interested precisely in the things that are at extremes. I'm certainly like that. Unless we go to extremes, we won't get anywhere.

  John Cage

  Change, Mind, Extremes

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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

  Music, Practice, Singing

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.28, Wesleyan University Press

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• I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I'm doing.

  John Cage

  Trying, Unfamiliar

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.6, Wesleyan University Press

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• What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.

  John Cage

  Writing, Order, Play

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• To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.

  John Cage

  Courage, Accepting, Unafraid

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• An artist conscientiously moves in a direction which for some good reason he takes, putting one work in front of the other with the hope he'll arrive before death overtakes him.

  John Cage

  Art, Moving, Before Death

  John Cage (2011). “Silence: Lectures and Writings, 50th Anniversary Edition”, Wesleyan University Press

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• We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.

  John Cage

  Life, Understanding, Involved

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• All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear I know nothing.

  John Cage

  Thinking, Sometimes, Method

  John Cage (2011). “Silence: Lectures and Writings, 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.18, Wesleyan University Press

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• Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.

  John Cage

  Carpe Diem, Thinking, Enjoy

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• My work became an exploration of non-intention.

  John Cage

  Exploration, Intention

  John Cage, Richard Kostelanetz (1993). “John Cage, writer: previously uncollected pieces”, Amadeus Press

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• I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.

  John Cage

  Sound, Lessons, Remember

  John Cage (2011). “Silence: Lectures and Writings, 50th Anniversary Edition”, Wesleyan University Press

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• Why do you not do as I do? Letting go of your thoughts as though they were the cold ashes of a long dead fire?

  John Cage

  Letting Go, Fire, Long

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.59, Wesleyan University Press

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• Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school? Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical? What if the ones inside can't hear very well, would that change my question?

  John Cage

  School, Passing By, People

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.55, Wesleyan University Press

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• In the nature of the use of chance operations is the belief that all answers answer all questions.

  John Cage

  Use, Answers, Chance

  John Cage (1997). “I–VI: MethodStructureIntentionDisciplineNotationIndeterminacyInterpenetrationImitationDevotionCircumstancesVariableStructureNonunderstandingContingencyInconsistencyPerformance”, p.456, Wesleyan University Press

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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.

  John Cage

  Acting, Philosopher, Can Do

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• The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later.

  John Cage

  White, Pieces, Firsts

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.112, Wesleyan University Press

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• As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.

  John Cage

  Consistency, Inconsistency

  Interview with John Corbett, 1989.

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• I am trying to check my habits of seeing, to counter them for the sake of greater freshness. I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I'm doing.

  John Cage

  Trying, Sake, Habit

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.6, Wesleyan University Press

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