235 Quotes by John Cage

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.

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.

It’s useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.

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.

Beware of losing what isn’t in your head.

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

If this word “music” is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.

An artist conscientiously moves in a direction which for some good reason he takes, putting one work in front of the other with the hope he’ll arrive before death overtakes him.

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?