This seems to me absolutely one of the quintessential things about the human condition. It’s what actually distinguishes man from any other animal: living with those who have lived and the companionship of those who are no longer alive. Not necessarily the people that one knew personally, I mean the people perhaps whom one only knows by what they did, or what they left behind, this question of the company of the past, that’s what interests me, and archives are a kind of site in the sense of like an archaeological site. John Berger
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More Quotes By John Berger
  1. Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.

  2. A man's death makes everything certain about him. Of course, secrets may die with him. And of course, a hundred years later somebody looking through some papers may discover a fact which throws a totally different light on his life and of which all the...

  3. My heart born nakedwas swaddled in lullabies. Later alone it worepoems for clothes. Like a shirt I carried on my backthe poetry I had read. So I lived for half a centuryuntil wordlessly we met. From my shirt on the back of the chair I...

  4. 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.

  5. 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...

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