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John Cage Quotes about Writing

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My favourite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I don't hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard.

My favourite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I don't hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard.

John Cage
Writing, Order, Favourite

After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, ‘In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony.’ I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, ‘In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.’

John Cage
Wall, Writing, Order

What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.

John Cage
Writing, Order, Play

I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said, 'You'll come to a wall you won't be able to get through.' So I said, 'I'll beat my head against that wall.'

John Cage
Wall, Writing, Feelings
Observer magazine Interview, 1982.

Paper should be edible, nutritious. Inks used for printing or writing should have delicious flavors. Magazines or newspapers read at breakfast should be eaten for lunch. Instead of throwing one's mail in the waste-basket, it should be saved for the dinner guests.

John Cage
Writing, Lunch, Should Have
John Cage (2010). “M: Writings ’67–’72”, p.115, Wesleyan University Press

When I went to the analyst for a kind of preliminary meeting, he said, 'I'll be able to fix you so that you'll write much more music than you do now.' I said, 'Good heavens! I already write too much, it seems to me.' That promise of his put me off.

John Cage
Writing, Heaven, Promise
John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.27, Wesleyan University Press

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.

John Cage
Mistake, Writing, Years
John Cage (2011). “Silence: Lectures and Writings, 50th Anniversary Edition”, Wesleyan University Press

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