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Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 20 of 128 of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
“I know these days are offering me only murder for my future. It is not just the creeping fingers of the cold that dissuade me from action, and allow me to accept the hypocritical hope that there may be some solution.”

It kinda reminds me of that Rilke quote on accepting the unresolved longing in your heart
Feb 28, 2026 03:46PM Add a comment
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 20 of 128 of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
“But I love her and her silence is propaganda for sainthood.”
Feb 28, 2026 03:36PM Add a comment
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 2 of 208 of Bad Behavior
“He met Diane at Bennington” well that’s not a good start…
Feb 19, 2026 09:01PM Add a comment
Bad Behavior

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 50 of 144 of Mina Loy - Songs to Joannes & Other Verse (Forgotten Poets)
We might have coupled
In the bed-ridden monopoly of the moment
Or broken flesh with one another
At the profane communion table
Feb 11, 2026 08:28PM Add a comment
Mina Loy - Songs to Joannes & Other Verse (Forgotten Poets)

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 40 of 190 of Written on the Body
“Why is the measure of love loss?”
Feb 08, 2026 04:27PM Add a comment
Written on the Body

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 74 of 96 of A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story
“She felt sorry for him; often her pity left her defenseless when he wasn’t suffering at all and she merely thought of him in connection with some object which to her mind stood for her own past despair: a washbasin with cracked enamel, a tiny electric hot plate, blackened by boiled-over milk.”
Jan 28, 2026 07:24PM Add a comment
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 50 of 96 of A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story
“everything in her life had conspired to inculcate a kind of love that remains fixated on a particular irreplaceable object.”
Jan 28, 2026 07:09PM Add a comment
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 210 of 224 of Notes to John
“AA both isolated the alcoholic from everything that wasn’t AA and made the alcoholic see him or herself as perpetually sick, the ‘slip’ being guaranteed.”
Jan 13, 2026 09:06PM Add a comment
Notes to John

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 190 of 224 of Notes to John
“I said that Quintana did not go to a college with a strong, or even any, core curriculum. She went for two years to Bennington, then transferred to Barnard, but by then a certain amount of damage had been done.

‘The most unstructured environment possible. She was the classic wrong candidate for Bennington or Sarah Lawrence, from everything I know about her.’”
Jan 13, 2026 07:03PM Add a comment
Notes to John

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 170 of 224 of Notes to John
“She was always in her mind the ‘victim’ of other people.”
Jan 08, 2026 04:46PM Add a comment
Notes to John

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 165 of 224 of Notes to John
“When you hear someone resist AA in a strong way — and the most typical line of resistance has to do with ‘all that God business’ — you have to look for the reason they’re resisting. And in one or another version, it always comes down to their not being ready to give up the support they get from drinking.”
Jan 08, 2026 04:33PM Add a comment
Notes to John

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 150 of 224 of Notes to John
“Why do I have to be sick for the rest of my life?”
Jan 07, 2026 12:02AM Add a comment
Notes to John

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 32 of 85 of Notebooks, 1956-1978
“the most foreseeable with hope for some hidden thing concealed inside the opacity of stillness”
Dec 31, 2025 10:29AM Add a comment
Notebooks, 1956-1978

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 16 of 85 of Notebooks, 1956-1978
“unformed phrases slide into tight folds of sorrow”
Dec 30, 2025 01:55PM Add a comment
Notebooks, 1956-1978

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 14 of 240 of A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
“This endured absence is nothing more or less than forgetfulness. I am, intermittently, unfaithful. This is the condition of my survival; for if I did not forget, I should die. The lover who doesn’t forget sometimes dies of excess, exhaustion, and tension of memory (like Werther).”
Dec 11, 2025 11:12PM Add a comment
A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 75 of 688 of Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann
“And I don’t belong to you. / Both of us mourn now. / But like Orpheus I know / life on the side of death, / and the deepening blue / of your forever closed eye.”

AHHHHHHH
Oct 09, 2025 11:32AM Add a comment
Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 31 of 96 of Envelope Poems
“In this short Life / that only lasts an hour / merely / How much — how / little — is / within our / power”
Sep 22, 2025 04:33PM Add a comment
Envelope Poems

Oliver Zelman
Oliver Zelman is on page 62 of 96 of Memories That Smell like Gasoline
“after being diagnosed you are forever separated from you had come to view as your life or living, the world outside the eyes. The calendar tracings of biographical continuity get kind of screwed up. It’s like watching a movie suddenly and abruptly going in reverse a thousand miles a minute like the entire landscape and horizon is pulling away from you in reverse in order to spell out a physical separation.”
Aug 03, 2025 10:58AM Add a comment
Memories That Smell like Gasoline

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