Never chain your dogs together with sausages. One must accustom one’s self to be bored.
JOHN BERGERWhat is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.
More John Berger Quotes
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We follow songs in order to be enclosed. We find ourselves inside a message.
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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 -
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
JOHN BERGER -
There’s the artist’s intimacy and truthfulness to himself, but an equal intimacy to the Other [the one drawn].
JOHN BERGER -
Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.
JOHN BERGER -
Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast.
JOHN BERGER -
We who draw do so not only to make something observed visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its incalculable destination
JOHN BERGER -
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 -
Ours is the century of enforced travel of disappearances.
JOHN BERGER -
If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.
JOHN BERGER -
A man’s presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you.
JOHN BERGER -
Fanaticism comes from any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma.
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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 -
Today the discredit of words is very great.
JOHN BERGER -
In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man.
JOHN BERGER