John Cage
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.Collection: Space
I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.Collection: Poetry
There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.Collection: Poetry
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
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.
It's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.
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.
We carry our homes within us which enables us to fly.
Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.
We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
When we separate music from life we get art.
The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature, in her manner of operation.
It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of 'culture.'
The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.Collection: Listening
Everything you do is music, and everywhere is the best seat.Collection: Seats
Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.Collection: Music
Art is whatever you can get away with.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Art
The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.Collection: Silence
Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.Collection: Finding Yourself
Look at everything. Don't close your eyes to the world around you. Look and become curious and interested in what there is to see.Collection: Grateful
The Indians long ago knew that music was going on permanently and that hearing it was like looking out a window at a landscape which didn't stop when one turned away.Collection: Long Ago
The world, the real is not an object. It is a process.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Order
Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.Collection: Trying
My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heardCollection: My Favorite
My favorite piece [piece of music] is the one we hear all the time if we are quiet.Collection: Pieces
I like being moved. I don't like being pushed.Collection: Interesting
The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.Collection: Art
The world is no longer a romantic place; some of its people still are however, and therein lies the promise. Don't let the world win.Collection: Dream
An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.Collection: Errors
Every something is an echo of nothingCollection: Echoes
If there are questions then, of course, there are answers, but the final answer makes the questions seem absurd.Collection: Finals
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.Collection: Food
You can feel an emotion; just don't think that it's so important.Collection: Thinking
I don't need sound to talk to me.Collection: Sound
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.Collection: Musical
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.Collection: 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.Collection: Mistake
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.Collection: Hunting
Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.Collection: Music
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.Collection: Death
Everyday is a beautiful day, Everything is pleasingCollection: Beautiful
Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.Collection: Support
Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another.Collection: Home
As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.Collection: Happens
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.Collection: Music
Each moment presents what happens.Collection: Moments
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.Collection: Simple