Every authentic poem contributes to the labor of poetry… to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart…
JOHN BERGERThe strange power of art is sometimes it can show that what people have in common is more urgent than what differentiates them. It seems to me it’s something that theatre can do, but it’s rare; it’s very rare.
More John Berger Quotes
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The heart of Paris is like nothing so much as the unending interior of a house.
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Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.
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When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
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Matisse did neither. He clashed his colours together like cymbals and the effect was like a lullaby.
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Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation.
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Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.
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Yet the first symbols were animals. What distinguished men from animals was born of their relationship with them.
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Painting is something that you need to do, if not every day, then certainly most days. It is almost like being a pianist: if you stop, you lose something.
JOHN BERGER -
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.
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As Nelson Mandela has pointed out, boycott is not a principle, it is a tactic depending upon circumstances.
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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.
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Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama.
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The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product.
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Yet nowherein a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.
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For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.
JOHN BERGER