black
grey
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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.

John Berger

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
The zoo cannot but disappoint.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Disappoint Pet Zoos
The stars threaded on that line were like events threaded on a narrative. Imagining the constellations did not of course change the stars, nor did it change the black emptiness that surrounds them. What it changed was the way people read the night sky.
JOHN BERGER

Change Constellation Event Imagining Night People Sky Surround Threaded
The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set.
JOHN BERGER

Between Know Relation Settle
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.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Beyond Blindly Encounter Flicker Gaze Look Most Pass Stranger
We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice.
JOHN BERGER

Act Choice Look Only See
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
In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles.
JOHN BERGER

Anywhere Consequences Every Hour Modern People Political Politics Thousand Writing
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
JOHN BERGER

Book Inhabit Like Reading Real Roof Story Wall
Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation.
JOHN BERGER

Choice Decision Given Photography Situation
But toemigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.
JOHN BERGER

Always Centre Dismantle Emigrate Fragment Lost Move World
We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.
JOHN BERGER

Between Just never One Ourselves Thing
It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.
JOHN BERGER

Life Loss More Period Rest Suffer Together
Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated.
JOHN BERGER

Comic Connection Connections Draw Drawing Metaphor Reconnect Separate Upon Way
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
Japanese art looked closely around screens; Italian Renaissance art surveyed conquered nature through the window or door-frame of a palace.
JOHN BERGER

Around Close Conquer Country Door Frame Look Place Renaissance Screen Survey Window

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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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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Popular Authors

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