Viktor Shklovsky

While living in exile in Berlin, the formidable literary critic Viktor Shklovsky fell in love with Elsa Triolet. He fell into the habit of sending Elsa several letters a day, a situation she accepted under one condition: he was forbidden to write about love. Zoo, or Letters Not about Love is an epistolary novel born of this constraint, and although the brilliant and playful letters contained here cover everything from observations about contemporary German and Russian life to theories of art and literature, nonetheless every one of them is indirectly dedicated to the one topic they are all required to avoid: their author's own unrequited love.

Zoo, Or, Letters Not about Love

The proverbial tuxedo lasts a long, long time. 

Clark Louis

A tuxedo lasts a long time and can survive a revolution.

But we had never worn tuxedos. First we wore our high-school and university coats, then soldiers’ overcoats and then field jackets made from those overcoats. 

We have known no other way of life than that of war and revolution. It may be harming us, but we cannot escape it. 

Bogatyryov writes a lot and then loses the manuscripts.

He had begun to weep in Prague not out of sentimentality, but the way windows weep in a room heated for the first time in many weeks. 

The whole thing is simple — straightforward and elementary.

Was it conceivably for this piece of knowledge that I journeyed so far?

Zoo, Or, Letters Not about Love quotes

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