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No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

John Berger

Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn’t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
JOHN BERGER

Age Believe City Every Nothing Sex Teenager
Matisse did neither. He clashed his colours together like cymbals and the effect was like a lullaby.
JOHN BERGER

Clash Color Cymbal Effect Lullaby Matisse Neither Together
Publicity is the life of this culture – in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive – and at the same time publicity is its dream.
JOHN BERGER

Capitalism Culture Dream Publicity Same Time
Never chain your dogs together with sausages. One must accustom one’s self to be bored.
JOHN BERGER

Accustom Blessing Bored Chain Dog Sausage Self
The camera relieves us of the burden of memory.
JOHN BERGER

Burden Camera Memories Photography Recieve
Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.
JOHN BERGER

Common Emotion Envy Exist Glamour Personal Social
Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.
JOHN BERGER

Alive Cicadas Legend Poem Poet Quiet Soul
Writers who have neither product utopian trash.
JOHN BERGER

Neither Product Truth Utopian Writer
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
I wanted to write about looking at the world, so it’s more about helping people, or persuading people, to see what is around us; both the marvellous and the terrible.
JOHN BERGER

Around Help Look Marvelous People See Terrible Want World Writing
The existence of pleasure is the first mystery. The existence of pain has prompted far more philosophical speculation.
JOHN BERGER

More Mystery Pain Philosophical Presecute Space Speculation
The unsung, impersonal world remains outside, on the other surface of a placenta. All songs, even when their content or rendering is strongly masculine, operate maternally.
JOHN BERGER

All Content Impersonal Maternity Operate Outside Placenta Remain Song Surface
Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.
JOHN BERGER

Action Choice Determine Ethics Priorities Suggests
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
What do drawings mean to me? I really don’t know. The activity absorbs me. I forget everything else in a way that I don’t think happens with any other activity.
JOHN BERGER

Absorb Activity Draw Else Everything Forget Happen Mean Think Thinking
My heart born naked was swaddled in lullabies.
JOHN BERGER

Born Clothes Heart Lullabies Swaddled Year

No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

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No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

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Popular Authors

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