If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.
JOHN BERGERIf every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.
JOHN BERGERPicasso drawings are like that… the Rembrandts are like that. The artist who most often did that was Van Gogh.
JOHN BERGERThe human imagination… has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy.
JOHN BERGERWhat is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and not by a but.
JOHN BERGERPublicity 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 BERGERShe is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself.
JOHN BERGERBetween 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 BERGERIt was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.
JOHN BERGERWords 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 BERGEREverything in life, is a question of drawing a life, John, and you have to decide for yourself where to draw it.
JOHN BERGER[O]ften art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten.
JOHN BERGERWithout ethics man has no future. This is to say mankind without them cannot be itself.
JOHN BERGERThe heart of Paris is like nothing so much as the unending interior of a house.
JOHN BERGERMen look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.
JOHN BERGERTo be naked is to be oneself.
JOHN BERGERTracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity.
JOHN BERGER