Zoo: Or, Letters Not about Love

The same men are still attached to me and show no signs of abandoning their posts. The third one has virtually pinned himself to me. I consider him my most outstanding decoration.

I'm not going to write about love. I'm going to write about only about the weather. The weather in Berlin is nice today.

You gave me two assignments. 1) Not to call you. 2.) Not to see you.

In this letter, the author attempts to be light-hearted and cheerful, but I know for sure that in the next letter he won't be able to carry it off.

Naturally, a thing has only itself to blame if it doesn't know how to become loved. Especially things equipped with hands.

I don't feel like writing anymore. I have no use for letters; I have no use for a guitar. And I don't care one way or the other whether my love is like a stationary transmission. I just don't care. I know one thing: you won't even put my letter in the basket on the right side of your table.

You don't know — and that's just as well — that many words are forbidden. forbidden are words about flowers. Forbidden is spring. In general, all the good words are faint with exhaustion. I'm sick of wit and irony. Your letter made me envious. How I want to describe objects as if literature had never existed; the way one could write literarily.

You are violating our pact. You are writing me two letters a day.

Quit writing about HOW, HOW, HOW much you love me, because at the third how much, I start thinking about something else.