John Cage Quotes

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

Corporate Responsibility; Environmental Preservation; Consumer Protection; Sex & Race Discrimination (they must mean Sex and Race Liberation).

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

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.

Things we were going to do are now being done by others. They were, it seems, not in our minds to do (were we or they out of our minds?) but simply ready to enter any open mind, any mind disturbed enough not to have an idea in it.

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.

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

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

Veblen called it the price-system. Mills called it the Power Elite. It's probably no more than ninety-nine people who don't know what they are doing. They're involved in high finance. Fascinating form of gambling.

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

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.

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

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

Whereas what we need is to fumble around in the darkness, because that's where our lives (not necessarily all of the time, but at least some of the time, and particularly when life gets problematical for us) takes place.

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.