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To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal.

John Berger

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

Cigarette Dialogue Noth Parentless Proscenium Shar Time
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
Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one.
JOHN BERGER

Again never One Shall Single Stories Story Told
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
For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.
JOHN BERGER

Artist Discovery Drawing Literally Phrase Slick True
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
Every painted image of something is also about the absence of the real thing. All painting is about the presence of absence.
JOHN BERGER

Absence Painting Presence Real Something Thing
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
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
Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It’s the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.
JOHN BERGER

Argument Diversion Opposite Same Screen Struggle Towards Truthfulness Use Word Writing
Later alone it wore poems for clothes. Like a shirt I carried on my back the poetry I had read. So I lived for half a century until wordlessly we met. From my shirt on the back of the chair I learn tonight how many years of learning by heart I waited for you.
JOHN BERGER

Alone Carry Century Chair Clothes Heart Later Learn Like Live Poem Poet Read Want
The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.
JOHN BERGER

Female Herself Object Sight Surveyed Turn Vision Woman
The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon.
JOHN BERGER

Century Close Disappear Helpless Horizon Other People See
When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss.
JOHN BERGER

Anguish Childhood Grief Learn Loss Period Suffer Total
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
Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.
JOHN BERGER

Audience Cinema Deep Individually Nature Ritual Theatre Transport Unknown

To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal.

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To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal.

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