235 Quotes by John Cage

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

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

A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration--it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself.

...we make our lives by what we love.

All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear I know nothing.

Nothing more than nothing can be said.

Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.

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

In an utter emptiness anything can take place.