John Cage Thinking Quotations

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.

You can feel an emotion; just don't think that it's so important.

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.

I imagine that as contemporary music goes on changing in the way that I'm changing it what will be done is to more and more completely liberate sounds from abstract ideas about them and more and more exactly to let them be physically uniquely themselves. This means for me: knowing more and more not what I think a sound is but what it actually is in all of its acoustical details and then letting this sound exist, itself, changing in a changing sonorous environment.

I never had a hat, never wore one, but recently was given a brown suede duck-hunting hat. The moment I put it on I realized I was starved for a hat. I kept it warm by putting it on my head. I made plans to wear it especially when I was going to do any thinking. Somewhere in Virginia, I lost my hat.

It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.

Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.