As an orphan one learns to be self-sufficient and one learns the tricks of the trades which go with that. One becomes a free-lance.
As a free-lance, from the age of four or five onwards, I treated all those I encountered as if they too were orphans like me. And I believe I still do this.
I propose a conspiracy of orphans. We exchange winks. We reject hierarchies. All hierarchies. We take the shit of the world for granted and we exchange stories about how we nevertheless get by. We are impertinent. More than half the stars in the universe are orphan-stars belonging to no constellation. And they give off more light than all the constellation stars.
Yes we are impertinent. And I guess that I approach and chat up readers in the same way.
As if you too were orphans.
-John Berger, on what has made him the kind of storyteller he is, from the book Confabulations