John Cage

"Vulnerability is not a weakness. It is honesty."

"We shape our buildings, and our buildings shape our behavior."

"Music is not here. It is here, there, everywhere, all at once."

"Don't try to figure out what I want. Ask me."

"The activity of music will become more and more a part of life."

"Even if something is left undone, everyone must take the oath to follow Buddha's words: to save all beings with no limit."

"We must accept the fact that music changes."

"One must accept things as they are and then work with them."

"The secret to being creative is knowing how to hide your sources."

"Chance is a friend of the prepared mind."

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."

"The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences."

"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all."

"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims."

"Silence is not empty, it is full of answers."

"Everything we do is music."

"The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all."

"Listening to music is like reading a book written by someone who has ideas you've never had."

"One cannot make music that is happy or unhappy. One can only make music."

"I would find out something about music and then compose it."

"The question is not 'what do we want to communicate?' but 'what do we want to happen?'"

"Art's purpose is to imitate nature in her manner of operation."

"When you change the way you listen, the things you hear change."

"Structure is everywhere in nature and in art."

"One does not need to travel around the world to understand that the sky is blue everywhere."

"Instead of fighting for our lives, we could fight for fun."

"The mind is much more capable than people think of accepting contradiction and nonsense."

"Stop trying to create and simply let it emerge from within."

"In the absence of music, words take on great importance."

"We should accept anything that comes to us, and try to use it well."