On page 197 the biographer starts talking to John Berger directly. He writes, The past is not for living in, it says in Ways of Seeing: it is a well of conclusions from which we draw in order to act.

I dreamed of Gaza last night. I was seeing in pictures, I wasn't there, I knew I couldn't imagine being there without being there. I was only dreaming Gaza, not the real place as it's being destroyed. But the people in the pictures were moving still, and I wanted them to continue living somehow.