quote

“It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of ‘culture.’”

— John Cage

Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful.

— SHAKER PHILOSOPHY

(via the digging into worpress book)

If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.

—Henry Ford

Always think about practice . . . theory is not the endpoint of work, it is the work along the way to work.

— Félix González-Torres

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

— Francis Bacon

creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. design is knowing which ones to keep.

— Scott Adams

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

— Laurie Anderson

I am not a black artist, I am an artist.

— Jean Michel Basquiat

I wanted to get to non-art, non-connotative, non-anthropomorphic, non-geometric, non, nothing, everything, but of another kind, vision, sort, from a total other reference point.

— Eva Hesse

(via Leah Wechsler on FB)

That others grasp what I have in mind seems unessential, at least as long as they have something else in theirs.

— Alexander Calder