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If you don't have a friend who's a painter, you're in trouble.

— Morton Feldman

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Cited as having said that to John Cage in 1952 in Begin Again: A Bibliography of John Cage by Kenneth Silverman, p. 96.
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by Morton Feldman

Most music is metaphor, but Wolff is not. I am not metaphor either. Parable, maybe. Cage is sermon.

...The tragedy of music is that it begins with perfection.

After all, Jews invented psychiatry to help other Jews become Gentiles.

The composer makes plans, music laughs.

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More quotes by Morton Feldman

Do we have anything in music for example that really wipes everything out? That just cleans everything away?

For years I said if I could only find a comfortable chair I would rival Mozart.

To understand what music has to be, you have to live for music. Who's ready to do that?

Sound is all our dreams of music. Noise is music's dreams of us.

Music can imply the infinite if enough things depart from the norm far enough. Strange "abnormal" events can lead to the feeling that anything can happen, and you have a music with no boundaries.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Morton Feldman (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.