John Cage Quotes

We only hear what we listen for.

The world, the real is not an object. It is a process.

Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.

The truth is that everything causes everything else. We do not speak therefore of one thing causing another. There are no secrets. It's just we thought they said dead when they said bread.

Everything we do is music." (Classical Composer)(From: 4'33")

Each moment presents what happens.

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

One need not fear for the future of music.

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.

A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection.

I don't need sound to talk to me.

Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.

As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.

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.

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

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.

Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right.

If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.

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

Freedom from likes and dislikes, the sudden sense of identification, the spirit of comedy.

Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living

nothing is accomplished by writing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by hearing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by playing a piece of musicour ears are now in excellent condition.

Power and profit structures're out of cahoots with current technology. Aware of new inventions, corporations put them aside, waiting for competitive reasons until they're obliged to use new gimmicks.

We, the garden of technology. We, undecidable.

Sleep's what we need. It produces an emptiness in us into which sooner or later energies flow.

I discovered that those who seldom dwell on their emotions know better than anyone else just what an emotion is.

Theatre takes place all the time wherever one is and art simply facilitates persuading one this is the case.

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

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

When we separate music from life we get art.

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.