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Never Again Shall A Single Story Be Told As Though It Were The Only One.
-John Berger
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Never Again Shall A

John Berger
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Never Again Shall A Single Story Be Told As Though It Were The Only One.

Understanding the Quote: "never again shall a single story be told as though it were..."

This quote by John Berger reflects deeply on the theme of stories. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Stories, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how John Berger interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About John Berger

John Berger is celebrated for insightful thoughts on stories and motivation. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Stories
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If The Public Photograph Contributes To A Memory, It Is To The Memory Of An Unknowable And Total Stranger.
Memories
Stranger
Photograph
As Nelson Mandela Has Pointed Out, Boycott Is Not A Principle, It Is A Tactic Depending Upon Circumstances. 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.
Government
People
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The True Content Of A Photograph Is Invisible, For It Derives From A Play, Not With Form, But With Time.
Play
Invisible
Photograph
All Weddings Are Similar, But Every Marriage Is Different.
Marriage
Wedding
Different
The Publicity Image Steals Her Love Of Herself As She Is, And Offers It Back To Her For The Price Of The Product.
Publicity
Stealing
Offers
Every Painted Image Of Something Is Also About The Absence Of The Real Thing. All Painting Is About The Presence Of Absence.
Real
Painting
Absence
'fahrenheit 9/11' Is Astounding. Not So Much As A Film - Although It Is Cunning And Moving - But As An Event.
Moving
Events
Film
Sometimes, Because Of Its Immediacy, Television Produces A Kind Of Electronic Parable. Berlin, For Instance, On The Day The Wall Was Opened. Rostropovich Was Playing His Cello By The Wall That No Longer Cast A Shadow, And A Million East Berliners Were Thronging To The West To Shop With An Allowance Given Them By West German Banks! At That Moment The Whole World Saw How Materialism Had Lost Its Awesome Historic Power And Become A Shopping List.
Wall
Shopping
Shadow
A Cigarette Is A Breathing Space. It Makes A Parenthesis. The Time Of A Cigarette Is A Parenthesis, And If It Is Shared, You Are Both In That Parenthesis. Its Like A Proscenium Arch For A Dialogue.
Breathing Space
Arches
Cigarette
The Heart Of Paris Is Like Nothing So Much As The Unending Interior Of A House. 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.
Heart
Doors
Two
A Peasant Becomes Fond Of His Pig And Is Glad To Salt Away Its Pork. 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.
Animal
Pigs
Two
To Be Desired Is Perhaps The Closest Anybody In This Life Can Reach To Feeling Immortal.
Feelings
This Life
Immortal
There's The Artist's Intimacy And Truthfulness To Himself, But An Equal Intimacy To The Other [the One Drawn]. Picasso Drawings Are Like That... The Rembrandts Are Like That. The Artist Who Most Often Did That Was Van Gogh.
Artist
Drawing
Intimacy
I Wanted To Write About Looking At The World, So It's More About Helping People, Or Persuading People, To See What Is Around Us; Both The Marvellous And The Terrible.
Writing
People
World
What Any True Painting Touches Is An Absence - An Absence Of Which Without The Painting, We Might Be Unaware. And That Would Be Our Loss.
Loss
Might
Would Be
To Remain Innocent May Also Be. To Remain Ignorant.
Ignorant
May
Innocent
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.
Communication
Artist
Drawing
We Live In A Dominant Culture Of Ceaseless Departure And Progress That Has So Far Lasted Two Or Three Centuries.
Two
Progress
Three
The Impulse To Paint Comes Neither From Observation Nor From The Soul (which Is Probably Blind) But From An Encounter: The Encounter Between Painter And Model: Even If The Model Is A Mountain Or A Shelf Of Empty Medicine Bottles.
Medicine
Soul
Mountain
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. Yet The First Symbols Were Animals. What Distinguished Men From Animals Was Born Of Their Relationship With Them.
Animal
Men
Firsts
The Envied Are Like Bureaucrats; The More Impersonal They Are, The Greater The Illusion (for Themselves And For Others) Of Their Power.
Power
Envy
Illusion
One Of The Fundamental Reasons Why So Many Doctors Become Cynical And Disillusioned Is Precisely Because, When The Abstract Idealism Has Worn Thin, They Are Uncertain About The Value Of The Actual Lives Of The Patients They Are Treating. This Is Not Because They Are Callous Or Personally Inhuman: It Is Because They Live In And Accept A Society Which Is Incapable Of Knowing What A Human Life Is Worth.
Life
Doctors
Knowing
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. Writers Who Have Neither Product Utopian Trash.
Writing
People
Political
The Existence Of Pleasure Is The First Mystery. The Existence Of Pain Has Prompted Far More Philosophical Speculation. Pleasure And Pain Need To Be Considered Together; They Are Inseparable. Yet The Space Filled By Each Is Perhaps Different. Pleasure, Defined As A Sense Of Gratification, Is Essential For Nature
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So Time Doesn't Count, And Place Does?' I Said This To Tease Her. When I Was A Man, I Liked Teasing Her And She Went Along With It, Consenting, For It Reminded Us Both Of A Sadness That Had Passed.
Sadness
Men
Doe
Men Look At Women. Women Watch Themselves Being Looked At.
Love
Men
Watches
The Media Network Has Its Idols, But Its Principal Idol Is Its Own Style Which Generates An Aura Of Winning And Leaves The Rest In Darkness. It Recognizes Neither Pity Nor Pitilessness.
Winning
Media
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The Collaboration Which Sometimes Follows Is Seldom Based On Good Will: Usually On Desire, Rage, Fear, Pity Or Longing. The Modern Illusion Concerning Painting (which Post-modernism Has Done Nothing To Correct) Is That The Artist Is The Creator. Rather He Is A Reciever. What Seems Like Creaton Is The Act Of Giving Form To What He Has Recieved.
Artist
Giving
Desire
The Past Grows Gradually Around One, Like A Placenta For Dying.
Past
Dying
Grows
All Nationalisms Are At Heart Deeply Concerned With Names: With The Most Immaterial And Original Human Invention. Those Who Dismiss Names As A Detail Have Never Been Displaced; But The Peoples On The Peripheries Are Always Being Displaced. That Is Why They Insist Upon Their Continuity - Their Links With Their Dead And The Unborn.
Heart
Names
Links
Words Are So Often Used In The Opposite Sense, As A Screen Of Diversion. It's The Struggle Towards Truthfulness Which Is The Same Whether One Is Writing A Poem, A Novel Or An Argument.
Struggle
Writing
Opposites
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.
Writing
Trying
Stories
Post-modernism Has Cut Off The Present From All Futures. The Daily Media Add To This By Cutting Off The Past. Which Means That Critical Opinion Is Often Orphaned In The Present.
Mean
Cutting
Past
All Publicity Works Upon Anxiety.
Anxiety
Publicity
The Zoo Cannot But Disappoint. The Public Purpose Of Zoos Is To Offer Visitors The Opportunity Of Looking At Animals. 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.
Zoos
Animal
Opportunity
What Is Saved In The Cinema When It Achieves Art Is A Spontaneous Continuity With All Mankind. It Is Not An Art Of The Princes Or The Bourgeoisie. It Is Popular And Vagrant. In The Sky Of The Cinema People Learn What They Might Have Been And Discover What Belongs To Them Apart From Their Single Lives.
Art
Sky
People
I Use Charcoal A Lot. Partly Because It Has Such A Fantastic Range But Also Because It Is Very Easy To Erase. For Me, Drawing Is A Lot To Do With Taking Out, With Returning To The White Of The Paper.
White
Drawing
Use
All Creation Is In The Art Of Seeing.
Art
Creation
Seeing
If Every Event Which Occurred Could Be Given A Name, There Would Be No Need For Stories.
Names
Events
Would Be
Photography, Because It Stops The Flow Of Life, Is Always Flirting With Death.
Photography
Flirting
Flow
Everything In Life, Is A Question Of Drawing A Life, John, And You Have To Decide For Yourself Where To Draw It. You Cant Draw It For Others. You Can Try, Of Course, But It Doesn't Work. People Obeying Rules Laid Down My Somebody Else Is Not The Same Thing As Respecting Life. And If You Want To Respect Life, You Have To Draw A Line.
Drawing
People
Trying
The Autobiographical Doesn't Interest Me. I Could Think Of Few Things Less Interesting Than Rooting About In My Life.
Thinking
Interesting
Interest
A Man's Presence Suggests What He Is Capable Of Doing To You Or For You. By Contrast, A Woman's Presence... Defines What Can And Cannot Be Done To Her.
Men
Done
Contrast
History Always Constitutes The Relation Between A Present And Its Past. Consequently Fear Of The Present Leads To Mystification Of The Past
Past
Relation
Hair Is Associated With Sexual Power. With Passion. The Woman's Sexual Passion Needs To Be Minimized, So That The Spectator May Feel That He Has The Monopoly On Such Passion
Passion
Hair
Needs
We Who Draw Do So Not Only To Make Something Observed Visible To Others, But Also To Accompany Something Invisible To Its Incalculable Destination
Invisible
Destination
Draws
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.
Space
Giving
Normal
Compare The Cinema With Theatre. Both Are Dramatic Arts. Theatre Brings Actors Before A Public And Every Night During The Season They Re-enact The Same Drama. Deep In The Nature Of Theatre Is A Sense Of Ritual. The Cinema, By Contrast, Transports Its Audience Individually, Singly, Out Of The Theatre Towards The Unknown.
Art
Nature
Drama
The Opposite Of Love Is Not To Hate But To Separate. If Love And Hate Have Something In Common It Is Because, In Both Cases, Their Energy Is That Of Bringing And Holding Together
Love
Hate
Opposites
What Makes Photography A Strange Invention Is That Its Primary Raw Materials Are Light And Time.
Inspirational
Photography
Light
We Never Look At Just One Thing; We Are Always Looking At The Relation Between Things And Ourselves.
Looks
Relation
Just One
To Be Naked Is To Be Oneself. To Be Nude Is To Be Seen Naked By Others And Yet Not Recognised For Oneself.
Beauty
Naked
Oneself
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.
Men
Average
Oil
Nothing In The Nature Around Us Is Evil. This Needs To Be Repeated Since One Of The Human Ways Of Talking Oneself Into Inhuman Acts Is To Cite The Supposed Cruelty Of Nature.
Talking
Evil
Needs
Drawing Is A Way Of Coming Upon The Connection Between Things, Just Like Metaphor In Poetry Reconnects What Has Become Separated.
Drawing
Connections
Way
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.
Discovery
Drawing
Events
All Photographs Are There To Remind Us Of What We Forget. In This - As In Other Ways - They Are The Opposite Of Paintings. Paintings Record What The Painter Remembers. Because Each One Of Us Forgets Different Things, A Photo More Than A Painting May Change Its Meaning According To Who Is Looking At It.
Photography
Pain
Opposites
Nakedness Reveals Itself. Nudity Is Placed On Display. The Nude Is Condemned To Never Being Naked. Nudity Is A Form Of Dress.
Beauty
Dresses
Naked
When He Painted A Road, The Roadmakers Were There In His Imagination, When He Painted The Turned Earth Of A Ploughed Field, The Gesture Of The Blade Turning The Earth Was Included In His Own Act. 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)
Reality
Imagination
Earth
The Poverty Of Our Century Is Unlike That Of Any Other. It Is Not, As Poverty Was Before, The Result Of Natural Scarcity, But Of A Set Of Priorities Imposed Upon The Rest Of The World By The Rich.
Priorities
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World
Publicity Is The Life Of This Culture - In So Far As Without Publicity Capitalism Could Not Survive - And At The Same Time Publicity Is Its Dream.
Dream
Culture
Publicity
Directors Like Satyajit Ray, Rossellini, Bresson, Buñuel, Forman, Scorsese, And Spike Lee Have Used Non-professional Actors Precisely In Order That The People We See On The Screen May Be Scarcely More Explained Than Reality Itself. Professionals, Except Fo The Greatest, Usually Play Not Just The Necessary Role, But An Explanation Of The Role.
Reality
Order
Play
Those Who First Invented And Then Named The Constellations Were Storytellers. Tracing An Imaginary Line Between A Cluster Of Stars Gave Them An Image And An Identity. 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.
Stars
Night
Sky
When We Read A Story, We Inhabit It. The Covers Of The Book Are Like A Roof And Four Walls.
Wall
Book
Reading
Today The Discredit Of Words Is Very Great.
Hijacking
Today
Discredit
When We Read A Story, We Inhabit It. The Covers Of The Book Are Like A Roof And Four Walls. 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.
Wall
Book
Reading
The Relation Between What We See And What We Know Is Never Settled. Each Evening We See The Sun Set. We Know That The Earth Is Turning Away From It. Yet The Knowledge, The Explanation, Never Quite Fits The Sight.
Sight
Evening
Earth
Every City Has A Sex And Age Which Have Nothing To Do With Demography.
Sex
Cities
Age
Common-sense Is Part Of The Home-made Ideology Of Those Who Have Been Deprived Of Fundamental Learning, Of Those Who Have Been Kept Ignorant.
Home
Common Sense
Ignorant
Paris, I Believe, Is A Man In His Twenties In Love With An Older Woman.
Believe
Men
Cities
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.
Soul
Alive
Legends
The Extreme Proposition On Which Giacometti Based All His Mature Work Was That No Reality... Could Ever Be Shared. This Is Why He Believed It Impossible For A Work To Be Finished. This Is Why The Content Of Any Work Is Not The Nature Of The Figure Or Head Portrayed But The Incomplete History Of Him Staring At It.
Reality
Finishing
Impossible
Fanaticism Comes From Any Form Of Chosen Blindness Accompanying The Pursuit Of A Single Dogma.
Dogma
Form
Pursuit
Autobiography Begins With A Sense Of Being Alone. It Is An Orphan Form.
Orphan
Form
Autobiography
Advertising Is Not Merely An Assembly Of Competing Messages; It Is A Language Itself Which Is Always Being Used To Make The Same General Proposal
Messages
Language
Advertising
The Animal Has Secrets Which, Unlike The Secrets Of Caves, Mountains, Seas Are Specifically Addressed To Man.
Animal
Men
Sea
Never Chain Your Dogs Together With Sausages. One Must Accustom One's Self To Be Bored.
Dog
Blessing
Self
To Be Naked Is To Be Oneself. To Be Nude Is To Be Seen Naked By Others And Yet Not Recognized For Oneself. A Naked Body Has To Be Seen As An Object In Order To Become A Nude. (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.
Sight
Order
Naked
For The Artist, Drawing Is Discovery. And That Is Not Just A Slick Phrase; It Is Quite Literally True.
Artist
Discovery
Drawing
The Happiness Of Being Envied Is Glamour. Being Envied Is A Solitary Form Of Reassurance. It Depends Precisely Upon Not Sharing Your Experience With Those Who Envy You. You Are Observed With Interest But You Do Not Observe With Interest - If You Do, You Will Become Less Enviable. In This Respect The Envied Are Like Bureaucrats; The More Impersonal They Are, The Greater The Illusion (for Themselves And For Others) Of Their Power. The Power Of The Glamorous Resides In Their Supposed Happiness: The Power Of The Bureaucrat In His Supposed Authority.
Envy
Reassurance
Illusion
A Photograph Is A Meeting Place Where The Interests Of The Photographer, The Photographed, The Viewer And Those Who Are Using The Photograph Are Often Contradictory. These Contradictions Both Hide And Increase The Natural Ambiguity Of The Photographic Image.
Photographer
Contradiction
Natural
Malevich, Lissitsky, Kandinsky, Tatlin, Pevsner, Rodchenko... All Believed In The Social Role Of Art... Their Works Were Like Hinged Doors, Connecting Activity With Activity. Art With Engineering; Music With Painting; Poetry With Design; Fine Art With Propaganda; Photographs With Typography; Diagrams With Action; The Studio With The Street.
Art
Doors
Engineering
Landscapes Can Be Deceptive. Sometimes A Landscape Seems To Be Less A Setting For The Life Of Its Inhabitants Than A Curtain Behind Which Their Struggles, Achievements And Accidents Takes Place. For Those Who Are Behind The Curtain, Landmarks Are No Longer Only Geographic But Also Biographical And Personal
Struggle
Achievement
Landscape
It Is Seeing Which Establishes Our Place In The Surrounding World; We Explain That World With Words, But Words Can Never Undo The Fact That We Are Surrounded By It
World
Facts
Seeing
The Zoo Cannot But Disappoint.
Zoos
Animal
Pet
To Be Naked Is To Be Oneself.
Naked
Oneself
It Is Comparatively Easy To Achieve A Certain Unity In A Picture By Allowing One Colour To Dominate, Or By Muting All The Colours. Matisse Did Neither. He Clashed His Colours Together Like Cymbals And The Effect Was Like A Lullaby.
Artist
Unity
Together
Oil Painting Did To Appearances What Capital Did To Social Relations. It Reduced Everything To The Equality Of Objects. Everything Became Exchangeable Because Everything Became A Commodity.
Oil
Painting
Appearance
Today The Discredit Of Words Is Very Great. Most Of The Time The Media Transmit Lies. In The Face Of An Intolerable World, Words Appear To Change Very Little. State Power Has Become Congenitally Deaf, Which Is Why But The Editorialists Forget It Terrorists Are Reduced To Bombs And Hijacking.
Lying
Media
Political
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.
Art
People
Theatre
Nothing Fortuitous Happens In A Child's World. There Are No Accidents. Everything Is Connected With Everything Else And Everything Can Be Explained By Everything Else. . . . For A Young Child Everything That Happens Is A Necessity.
Children
World
Young
Glamour Cannot Exist Without Personal Social Envy Being A Common And Widespread Emotion. The Industrial Society ... Recognises Nothing Except The Power To Acquire ... No Other Kind Of Hope Or Satisfaction Or Pleasure Can Any Longer Be Envisaged Within The Culture Of Capitalism.
Envy
Culture
Satisfaction
One Can Say Of Language That It Is Potentially The Only Human Home, The Only Dwelling Place That Cannot Be Hostile To Man.
Home
Men
Dwelling Place
What Is Saved In The Cinema When It Achieves Art Is A Spontaneous Continuity With All Mankind.
Art
Cinema
Vagrants
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.
Mean
Thinking
Forget Everything
Painting Is Something That You Need To Do, If Not Every Day, Then Certainly Most Days. It Is Almost Like Being A Pianist: If You Stop, You Lose Something.
Needs
Painting
Pianist
That We Find A Crystal Or A Poppy Beautiful Means That We Are Less Alone, That We Are More Deeply Inserted Into Existence Than The Course Of A Single Life Would Lead Us To Believe.
Beautiful
Nature
Believe
The Human Imagination... Has Great Difficulty In Living Strictly Within The Confines Of A Materialist Practice Or Philosophy. It Dreams, Like A Dog In Its Basket, Of Hares In The Open.
Dream
Dog
Philosophy
Ever Since The Greek Tragedies, Artists Have, From Time To Time, Asked Themselves How They Might Influence Ongoing Political Events.
Artist
Political
Greek
Traditional Chinese Art Looked At The Earth From A Confucian Mountain Top; Japanese Art Looked Closely Around Screens; Italian Renaissance Art Surveyed Conquered Nature Through The Window Or Door-frame Of A Palace. For The Cro-magnons, Space Is A Metaphysical Arena Of Continually Intermittent Appearances And Disappearances.
Art
Italian
Space
Without Ethics Man Has No Future. This Is To Say Mankind Without Them Cannot Be Itself. Ethics Determine Choices And Actions And Suggest Difficult Priorities.
Men
Choices
Priorities
When A Painter Is Working He Is Aware Of The Means Which Are Available To Him - These Include His Materials, The Style He Inherits, The Conventions He Must Obey, His Prescribed Or Freely Chosen Subject Matter - As Constituting Both An Opportunity And A Restraint.
Mean
Opportunity
Challenges
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.
May
Impossible
Injustice
Capitalism Survives By Forcing The Majority, Whom It Exploits, To Define Their Own Interests As Narrowly As Possible. This Was Once Achieved By Extensive Deprivation. Today In The Developed Countries It Is Being Achieved By Imposing A False Standard Of What Is And What Is Not Desirable.
Country
Majority
Today
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.
Mean
Artist
Perfection
Every Authentic Poem Contributes To The Labor Of Poetry... To Bring Together What Life Has Separated Or Violence Has Torn Apart... 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.
Loss
Space
Together
Protest And Anger Practically Always Derives From Hope, And The Shouting Out Against Injustice Is Always In The Hope Of Those Injustices Being Somewhat Corrected And A Little More Justice Established.
Justice
Littles
Shouting
Modern Thought Has Transferred The Spectral Character Of Death To The Notion Of Time Itself. Time Has Become Death Triumphant Over All.
Death
Time
Character
Propaganda Requires A Permanent Network Of Communication So That It Can Systematically Stifle Reflection With Emotive Or Utopian Slogans. Its Pace Is Usually Fast.
Communication
Reflection
Pace
When We Suffer Anguish We Return To Early Childhood Because That Is The Period In Which We First Learnt To Suffer The Experience Of Total Loss. 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.
Grief
Loss
Childhood
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.
Home
Smell
Clothes
Glamour Cannot Exist Without Personal Social Envy Being A Common And Widespread Emotion.
Envy
Emotion
Common
It Can Happen That A Book, Unlike Its Authors, Grows Younger As The Years Pass.
Book
Years
Grows
Every City Has A Sex And An Age Which Have Nothing To Do With Demography. Rome Is Feminine. So Is Odessa. London Is A Teenager, An Urchin, And, In This, Hasn't Changed Since The Time Of Dickens. Paris, I Believe, Is A Man In His Twenties In Love With An Older Woman.
Sex
Teenager
Believe
Compassion Has No Place In The Natural Order Of The World Which Operates On The Basis Of Necessity. Compassion Opposes This Order And Is Therefore Best Thought Of As Being In Some Way Supernatural.
Compassion
Order
World
I Can't Tell You What Art Does And How It Does It, But I Know That Often Art Has Judged The Judges, Pleaded Revenge To The Innocent And Shown To The Future What The Past Suffered, So That It Has Never Been Forgotten. Art, When It Functions Like This, Becomes A Meeting-place Of The Invisible, The Irreducible, The Enduring, Guts, And Honor.
Art
Revenge
Past
If Everything That Existed Were Continually Being Photographed, Every Photograph Would Become Meaningless.
Photograph
Ifs
Meaningless
[o]ften Art Has Judged The Judges, Pleaded Revenge To The Innocent And Shown To The Future What The Past Suffered, So That It Has Never Been Forgotten. . . .
Art
Revenge
Past
Ours Is The Century Of Enforced Travel Of Disappearances. The Century Of People Helplessly Seeing Others, Who Were Close To Them, Disappear Over The Horizon.
Travel
People
Horizon
Whenever The Intensity Of Looking Reaches A Certain Degree, One Becomes Aware Of An Equally Intense Energy Coming Towards One Through The Appearance Of Whatever It Is One Is Scrutinizing.
Energy
Degrees
Appearance
Every Authentic Poem Contributes To The Labour Of Poetry... To Bring Together What Life Has Separated Or Violence Has Torn Apart.
Poetry
Together
Torn Apart
The Camera Relieves Us Of The Burden Of Memory.
Photography
Memories
Cameras
You Painted A Naked Woman Because You Enjoyed Looking At Her, Put A Mirror In Her Hand And You Called The Painting “vanity,” Thus Morally Condemning The Woman Whose Nakedness You Had Depicted For You Own Pleasure.
Vanity
Mirrors
Hands
We Only See What We Look At. To Look Is An Act Of Choice.
Choices
Looks
The Camera Relieves Us Of The Burden Of Memory. It Surveys Us Like God, And It Surveys For Us. Yet No Other God Has Been So Cynical, For The Camera Records In Order To Forget.
God
Photography
Memories
The Contradiction In Perspective Was That It Structured All Images Of Reality To Address A Single Spectator Who, Unlike God, Could Only Be In One Place At A Time.
Reality
Perspective
Addresses
Photographs Bear Witness To A Human Choice Being Exercised In A Given Situation. A Photograph Is A Result Of The Photographer's Decision That It Is Worth Recording That This Particular Event Or This Particular Object Has Been Seen. If Everything That Existed Were Continually Being Photographed, Every Photograph Would Become Meaningless.
Photography
Choices
Decision
Never Again Shall A Single Story Be Told As Though It Were The Only One.
Stories
Emigration, Forced Or Chosen, Across National Frontiers Or From Village To Metropolis, Is The Quintessential Experience Of Our Time.
Village
Emigration
Metropolis
Men Look At Women. Women Watch Themselves Being Looked At. This Determines Not Only Most Relations Between Men And Women But Also The Relation Of Women To Themselves. The Surveyor Of Woman In Herself Is Male: The Surveyed Female. Thus She Turns Herself Into An Object - And Most Particularly An Object Of Vision: A Sight.
Men
Sight
Vision
My Heart Born Naked Was Swaddled In Lullabies. Later Alone It Wore Poems For Clothes. Like A Shirt I Carried On My Back The Poetry I Had Read. So I Lived For Half A Century Until Wordlessly We Met. From My Shirt On The Back Of The Chair I Learn Tonight How Many Years Of Learning By Heart I Waited For You.
Heart
Years
Clothes
To Live And Die Amongst Foreigners May Seem Less Absurd Than To Live Persecuted Or Tortured By One's Fellow Countrymen.... But Toemigrate Is Always To Dismantle The Centre Of The World, And So To Move Into A Lost, Disoriented One Of Fragments.
Moving
World
May
Seeing Comes Before Words. The Child Looks And Recognizes Before It Can Speak.
Children
Looks
Speak
You Can Plan Events, But If They Go According To Your Plan They Are Not Events.
Events
Plans
According To Plan
The Essence Of Songs Is Neither Vocal Nor Cerebral But Organic. We Follow Songs In Order To Be Enclosed. We Find Ourselves Inside A Message. 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.
Song
Order
Essence
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.
Past
Wish
Prisoner
The Spectator-buyer Is Meant To Envy Herself As She Will Become If She Buys The Product. She Is Meant To Imagine Herself Transformed By The Product Into An Object Of Envy For Others, An Envy Which Will Then Justify Her Loving Herself.
Envy
Imagine
Buyers
Unlike Any Other Visual Image, A Photograph Is Not A Rendering, An Imitation Or An Interpretation Of Its Subject, But Actually A Trace Of It. No Painting Or Drawing, However Naturalist, Belongs To Its Subject In The Way That A Photograph Does.
Photography
Drawing
Doe
Hope Is A Contraband Passed From Hand To Hand And Story To Story.
Hands
Stories
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