Quotes from John Cage

The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.

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

Every something is an echo of nothing

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.

Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.

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.

In the dark, all cats are black.

All great art is a form of complaint

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

Artists talk a lot about freedom. So, recalling the expression "free as a bird," Morton Feldman went to a park one day and spent some time watching our feathered friends. When he came back, he said, "You know? They're not free: they're fighting over bits of food.

The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.

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

Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of it's own accord.

College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.

It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.

The world is teeming; anything can happen.

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

The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accordance with nature, in her manner of operation.

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?

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

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

Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.

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

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?