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 BERGERWe know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.
More John Berger Quotes
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Hair is associated with sexual power. With passion.
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The camera relieves us of the burden of memory.
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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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Between 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.
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There’s the artist’s intimacy and truthfulness to himself, but an equal intimacy to the Other [the one drawn].
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The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.
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Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects.
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Everything became exchangeable because everything became a commodity.
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Today the discredit of words is very great.
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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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We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.
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The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form, but with time.
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Everything in life, is a question of drawing a life, John, and you have to decide for yourself where to draw it.
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Every authentic poem contributes to the labor of poetry… to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart…
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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