3 ratings (1.00 avg)
0 reviews

Oliver Zelman

Add friend

Oliver’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (1010)
currently-reading‎ (0)
read‎ (292)
fiction‎ (414)

poetry‎ (120)
non-fiction‎ (75)
short-story‎ (65)
philosophy‎ (53)

plays‎ (52)
bookshelf‎ (34)
art‎ (14)
favorites‎ (10)

letters‎ (9)
diaries‎ (7)
winter‎ (4)
wantlist‎ (2)

Stats | More…

“I keep trying to convey something which cannot be conveyed, to explain something which cannot be explained, something in my bones, which can only be experienced in these same bones. In essence it may be nothing more than that fear we have already discussed so often, but extended to everything, fear of the greatest things as well as the smallest, fear, conclusive fear of pronouncing a single word. On the other hand, maybe this fear isn't simply fear, but also longing for something greater than anything that can inspire fear.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

0 likes

“He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates all the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

0 likes

“The truth is you already know what it's like. You already know the difference between the size and speed of everything that flashes through you and the tiny inadequate bit of it all you can ever let anyone know. As though inside you is this enormous room full of what seems like everything in the whole universe at one time or another and yet the only parts that get out have to somehow squeeze out through one of those tiny keyholes you see under the knob in older doors. As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes.”
― David Foster Wallace, Good Old Neon

1 likes

“All light is dead,' said Ingeborg. 'All this light was emitted thousands and millions of years ago. It's the past, do you see? When these stars cast their light, we didn't exist, life on Earth didn't exist, even Earth didn't exist. This light was cast a long time ago. It's the past, we're surrounded by the past, everything that no longer exists or exists only in memory or guesswork is there now, above us, shining on the mountains and the snow and we can't do anything to stop it.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666

0 likes

“She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of—to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment the range of experience seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, she supposed; one after another, she, Lily, Augustus Charmichael, must feel, our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

1 likes

More of Oliver’s quotes…