Quote #10

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

More from John Cage

  1. We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
  2. If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical, it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that w…
  3. Cage's Music of Changes was a further indication that the arts in general were beginning to consciously deal with the 'given' material and,…
  4. Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
  5. 'Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.'
  6. I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
  7. 'What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there…
  8. I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.

All John Cage quotes