John Cage Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• Everything I see is something I haven't memorized.

  John Cage

  Havens

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• A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration--it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself.

  John Cage

  Views, Sound, Doe

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

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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

  Writing, Heaven, Promise

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.27, Wesleyan University Press

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• As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.

  John Cage

  Happens, Things Happen

  John Cage (2010). “A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings”, p.4, Wesleyan University Press

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• Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another.

  John Cage

  Home, School, Nursing

  John Cage (2010). “M: Writings ’67–’72”, p.22, Wesleyan University Press

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• No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.

  John Cage

  Ideas, Listening

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.91, Wesleyan University Press

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• We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn't speak or talk like a human being, that doesn't know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. 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

  Music, School, Two

  "Autobiographical Statement". www.johncage.org. April 1990.

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• So somebody has talent? So what? Dime a dozen. And we're overpopulated. Actually we have more food than we have people and more art. We've gotten to the point of burning food. When will we begin to burn our art?

  John Cage

  Art, People, Dimes

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.1, Wesleyan University Press

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• A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection.

  John Cage

  Music, Resurrection, Finished Work

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

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• You can feel an emotion; just don't think that it's so important.

  John Cage

  Thinking, Important, Emotion

  John Cage, Daniel Charles (1981). “For the birds”, Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd

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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.

  John Cage

  Food, Cooking, Delay

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.164, Wesleyan University Press

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• I don't need sound to talk to me.

  John Cage

  Sound, Needs, Talk To Me

  Interview with Miroslav Sebestik, 1991.

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• If there are questions then, of course, there are answers, but the final answer makes the questions seem absurd.

  John Cage

  Finals, Answers, Absurd

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

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• 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

  Sound, Needs, Following

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.22, Wesleyan University Press

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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.

  John Cage

  Mistake, Writing, Years

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

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• I needed another basis for musical structure. This I found in sound's duration parameter, sound's only parameter which is present even when no sound is intended.

  John Cage

  Musical, Sound, Duration

  John Cage (2010). “M: Writings ’67–’72”, p.153, Wesleyan University Press

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• Percussion music is revolution. Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive to the restrictions of nineteenth century music. Today we are fighting for their emancipation. Tomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom. At the present stage of revolution, a healthy lawlessness is warranted. Experiment must necessarily be carried on by hitting anything-tin pans, rice bowls, iron pipes-anything we can lay our hands on. Not only hitting, but rubbing, scraping, making sound in every possible way...What we can't do ourselves will be done by machines which we will invent.

  John Cage

  Music, Fighting, Hands

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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

  Hunting, Mushrooms, Ideas

  John Cage (2012). “El libro de las setas”, p.56, Univ de Castilla La Mancha

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• Now that things are so simple, there's so much to do.

  John Cage

  Simple

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

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• Each moment presents what happens.

  John Cage

  Moments, Happens

  John Cage (2010). “A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings”, p.107, Wesleyan University Press

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• We are simple-minded enough to think that if we were saying something we would use words. We are rather doing something. The meaning of what we do is determined by each one who sees and hears it.

  John Cage

  Simple, Thinking, Use

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.108, Wesleyan University Press

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