Byenyan Bitrus > Byenyan's Quotes

“I was scared of one thing after another. I still am.
Naturally. How could it be otherwise? You can either be fearless or you can be free, you can’t be both.”
― John Berger, Here Is Where We Meet: A Story of Crossing Paths

“If you have to cry, he said, and sometimes you can’t help it, if you have to cry, cry afterwards, never during! Remember this. Unless you’re with those who love you, only those who love you, and in that case you’re already lucky, for there are never many who love you — if you’re with them, you can cry during. Otherwise you cry afterwards”
― John Berger, Here Is Where We Meet: A Story of Crossing Paths

“Both agreed that to find any sense in life it was pointless to search in the places where people were instructed to look. Sense was only to be found in secrets.”
― John Berger, Here Is Where We Meet: A Story of Crossing Paths

“Hold Everything Dear”
― John Berger, Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance

“At some point when tending someone you love who is in pain, you reach the edge of a lake, and you look at each other with such joy at the stillness. [Letter unsent]”
― John Berger, From A to X: A Story in Letters

“Happiness is not something to be pursued, it is something met, an encounter. Most encounters, however, have a sequel; this is their promise. The encounter with happiness has no sequel. All is there instantly. Happiness is what pierces grief.”
― John Berger

“The promise is that again and again from the garbage the scattered feathers the ashes and broken bodies something new and beautiful may be born”
― John Berger

“But for the overcrowded, for those who have little or nothing except, sometimes, courage and love, hope works differently. Hope is then something to bite on, to put between the teeth. Don't forget this. Be a realist. With hope between the teeth comes the strength to carry on even when fatigue never lets up, comes strength, when necessary, to choose not to shout at the wrong moment, comes the strength above all not to howl. A person, with hope between her or his teeth, is a brother or sister who commands respect.”
― John Berger, Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance

“The canvas is on the easel now, as large and white as a sheet that has never been slept in. My paintings have become larger and larger as I have grown older. As a young painter you are overwhelmed by the complexity of your subject. Every crease, every dimple, is an equally startling revelation. It’s like your first girl. You don’t understand her. You can only copy her – hesitantly. Later you become shamelessly yourself. You create in your image – as nearly life-size as possible.”
― John Berger, A Painter of Our Time

“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.”
― John Berger

“I have never thought of writing as a profession. It is a solitary independent activity in which practice can never bestow seniority.”
― John Berger

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has gotten their freedom, by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them”
― Assata Shakur