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The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared, you are both in that parenthesis. Its like a proscenium arch for a dialogue.

John Berger

A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Away Become Fond Glad Peasant Pig Pigs Pork Two
One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating.
JOHN BERGER

Abstract Actual Cynical Disillusioned Doctor Fundamental Idealism Knowing Life Precise Reason Treat
Between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense to that life, the empty space, the gap, is enormous.
JOHN BERGER

Experience Give Giving Moment Narrative Normal Offer Planet Public Sense Space
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
JOHN BERGER

Book Cover Four Inhabit Reading Roof Wall
To be naked is to be oneself.
JOHN BERGER

Be Naked Oneself
Ours is the century of enforced travel of disappearances.
JOHN BERGER

Century Disappearance Enforce Horizon Our People Travel
This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth.
JOHN BERGER

Accept Callous Human Inhuman Know Live Society Worth
It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it
JOHN BERGER

Establish Explain Fact Facts Place Seeing Surround Undo Word World
Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.
JOHN BERGER

Beauty Condemned Display Dresses Naked Nue Place
Every authentic poem contributes to the labour of poetry… to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart.
JOHN BERGER

Apart Authentic Contribute Labor Poem Poetry Separate Together Violence
Nothing fortuitous happens in a child’s world. There are no accidents. Everything is connected with everything else and everything can be explained by everything else. . . . For a young child everything that happens is a necessity.
JOHN BERGER

Child Children Fortuitouus Happen Nothing World Young
Your lips, beloved, are like a honeycomb: honey and milk are under the tongue. And the smell of your clothes is like the smell of my home.
JOHN BERGER

Beloved Clothes Home Honeycomb Like Lip Milk Smell Tongue
What any true painting touches is an absence – an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.
JOHN BERGER

Absence Loss might Paint Painting Touch True Unaware
The human imagination… has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy.
JOHN BERGER

Confine Difficulty Dog Dream Human Imagination Live Materialist Philosophy Practice Strict
Yet the first symbols were animals. What distinguished men from animals was born of their relationship with them.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Born Distinguish Men Relationship Symbol Yet
I use charcoal a lot. Partly because it has such a fantastic range but also because it is very easy to erase.
JOHN BERGER

Charcoal Drawing Erase Fantastic Partly Range Use White Wrase
Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.
JOHN BERGER

Common Emotion Envy Exist Glamour Personal Social
Whenever he looked he saw the labour of existence; and this labour, recognised as such, was what constituted reality for him. (On Vincent Van Gogh)
JOHN BERGER

Constitute Country Existence Labour Look People Recognised Saw Sky Vicent
You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.
JOHN BERGER

Enjoy Hand Look Mirror Morally Naked Paint Painting Pleasure Vanity Women
You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest – if you do, you will become less enviable. In this respect the envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.
JOHN BERGER

Bureaucrat Greater Illusion Impersonal Interest Observe Others Power Themselves
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
JOHN BERGER

Book Inhabit Like Reading Real Roof Story Wall
It is not usually possible in a poem or a story to make the relationship between particular and universal fully explicit. Those who try to do so end up writing parables.
JOHN BERGER

Between Explicit Fully Make Relationship Stories Trying Universal Usually Writing
Poetry can repair no loss, but it defies the space which separates. And it does this by its continual labor of reassembling what has been scattered.
JOHN BERGER

Continual Define Poetry Reassembking Repair Scattered Separate Space
But toemigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.
JOHN BERGER

Always Centre Dismantle Emigrate Fragment Lost Move World
You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn’t work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.
JOHN BERGER

Course Else Life Line Obey Other People Respect Somebody
What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.
JOHN BERGER

Inspirational Light Material Photography Primary
We follow songs in order to be enclosed. We find ourselves inside a message.
JOHN BERGER

Enclose Follow Inside Message Order Ourselves Song

The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared, you are both in that parenthesis. Its like a proscenium arch for a dialogue.

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The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared, you are both in that parenthesis. Its like a proscenium arch for a dialogue.

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Popular Authors

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