John Cage Quotes

...for we have found that by excluding we grow thin inside even though we may have an enormous bank account outside.

Now we have come to the end of the part about structure. However, it occurs to me to say more about structure.

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.

Dad's oil dehydrator was a contained electrostatic field, one electrode down the center, the other the container's inner wall. Principal problem was finding a dielectric to separate the two. Refuse oil poured in came out as oil of the highest grade, dry chemicals, and drinking water. Petroleum Rectifying Company successfully prohibited its use.

I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the use of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard. Photoelectric, film and mechanical mediums for the synthetic production of music will be explored.

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.

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

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?

As I see it, poetry is not prose simply because poetry is in one way or another formalized. It is not poetry by reason of its content or ambiguity but by reason of its allowing musical elements (time, sound) to be introduced into the world of words. Thus, traditionally, information no matter how stuffy (e. g. the sutras and shastras of India) was transmitted in poetry. It was easier to grasp that way. Karl Shapiro may have been thinking along these lines when he wrote his Essay on Rime in poetry.

Farting, don't think, just fart.

I can't speak or write German, but I'am overjoyed because I have bought one of your pictures. Now it is in me. I write music. You are my teacher.

Więcej za pomocą mniej.

...the important questions are answered by not liking only but disliking and accepting equally what one likes and dislikes. Otherwise there is no access to the dark night of the soul.

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

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