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A drawing is an autobiographical record of one’s discovery of an event – either seen, remembered or imagined. A ‘finished’ work is an attempt to construct an event in itself.

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.
JOHN BERGER

Beloved Clothes Home Honeycomb Like Lip Milk Smell Tongue
This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.
JOHN BERGER

Determine Effection Men Most Only Relation Relationship Themselves Wome
A tactic which allows people, as distinct from their elected but often craven governments, to apply a certain pressure on those wielding power in what they, the boycotters, consider to be an unjust or immoral way.
JOHN BERGER

Allow Boycott Consider Craven Distinct Elected Government People Pressure Tactic
Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation.
JOHN BERGER

Choice Decision Given Photography Situation
The existence of pleasure is the first mystery. The existence of pain has prompted far more philosophical speculation.
JOHN BERGER

More Mystery Pain Philosophical Presecute Space Speculation
What 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.
JOHN BERGER

Everything Four Happen Make Place Possible Story Take Wall
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

Average Country Men never Painting Presume Principal Protagonist Rude Spectator
For me, drawing is a lot to do with taking out, with returning to the white of the paper.
JOHN BERGER

Lot Me Out Paper Returning Take White
(The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. To be naked is to be without disguises.
JOHN BERGER

Display Itself Nakedness Nudity Object Place Reveal Sight Stimulate
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
Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.
JOHN BERGER

Alive Cicadas Legend Poem Poet Quiet Soul
What distinguished man from animals was the human capacity for symbolic thought, the capacity which was inseparable from the development of language in which words were not mere signals, but signifiers of something other than themselves.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Capacity Development First Human In Language Men Separate Signal Symbolic
The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can’t do is to change its consequences.
JOHN BERGER

Consequences Exactly Past Prisoner Wish
My heart born naked was swaddled in lullabies.
JOHN BERGER

Born Clothes Heart Lullabies Swaddled Year
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

Absorb Activity Draw Else Everything Forget Happen Mean Think Thinking
Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.
JOHN BERGER

Alone Autobiography Begin Form Orphan Sense

A drawing is an autobiographical record of one’s discovery of an event – either seen, remembered or imagined. A ‘finished’ work is an attempt to construct an event in itself.

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A drawing is an autobiographical record of one’s discovery of an event – either seen, remembered or imagined. A ‘finished’ work is an attempt to construct an event in itself.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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