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What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind.

John Berger

What 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 BERGER

Connect Difficult Significant Statement Strange Understand
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
A drawing is essentially a private work, related only to the artist’s own needs; a ‘finished’ statue or canvas is essentially a public, presented work – related far more directly to the demands of communication.
JOHN BERGER

Artist Communication Drawing Finished Need Only Private Public Relate Statue Work
All weddings are similar, but every marriage is different.
JOHN BERGER

Different Marriage Similar Wedding
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
We can become anything. That is why injustice is impossible here. There may be the accident of birth, there is no accident of death. Nothing forces us to remain what we were.
JOHN BERGER

Accident Anything Birth Impossible Injustice May Nothing Remain
Buildings become furniture, courtyards become carpets and arrases, the streets are like galleries, the boulevards conservatories. It is a house, one or two centuries old, rich, bourgeois, distinguished. The only way of going out, or shutting the door behind you, is to leave the centre.
JOHN BERGER

Behind Bourgeois Building Conservatories Door Furniture Galleries Go House Shutting Street Way
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
At times failure is very necessary for the artist. It reminds him that failure is not the ultimate disaster. And this reminder liberates him from the mean fussing of perfectionism.
JOHN BERGER

Artist Disaster Failure Mean Necessary Perfection Time Ultimate
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
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 Envied Envy Greater Illusion Power Themselves
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
If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.
JOHN BERGER

Community Everything Exist Meaningless Photograph
The 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.
JOHN BERGER

Art Common Differentiate More People Power Rare Sometimes Strange Theatre Urgent
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
Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.
JOHN BERGER

Common Emotion Envy Exist Glamour Personal Social

What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind.

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What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind.

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