evan

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about evan.


Ship of Magic
evan is currently reading
by Robin Hobb (Goodreads Author)
bookshelves: currently-reading
Rate this book
Clear rating

progress: 
 
  (45%)
Mar 14, 2026 08:54AM

 
Loading...
Franz Kafka
“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
Franz Kafka

Sylvia Plath
“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Franz Kafka
“I am free and that is why I am lost.”
Franz Kafka

Sylvia Plath
“What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited. Yet I am not a cretin: lame, blind and stupid. I am not a veteran, passing my legless, armless days in a wheelchair. I am not that mongoloidish old man shuffling out of the gates of the mental hospital. I have much to live for, yet unaccountably I am sick and sad. Perhaps you could trace my feeling back to my distaste at having to choose between alternatives. Perhaps that's why I want to be everyone - so no one can blame me for being I. So I won't have to take the responsibility for my own character development and philosophy. People are happy - - - if that means being content with your lot: feeling comfortable as the complacent round peg struggling in a round hole, with no awkward or painful edges - no space to wonder or question in. I am not content, because my lot is limiting, as are all others. People specialize; people become devoted to an idea; people "find themselves." But the very content that comes from finding yourself is overshadowed by the knowledge that by doing so you are admitting you are not only a grotesque, but a special kind of grotesque.”
Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Franz Kafka
“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
Franz Kafka

year in books
iwi
iwi
131 books | 3 friends

elliephant
246 books | 19 friends

Felicia
373 books | 38 friends

Raghad
978 books | 1,712 friends

!
!
1,248 books | 180 friends

Kate
141 books | 4 friends

Shea Hall
41 books | 10 friends

Dani
187 books | 8 friends

More friends…

Favorite Genres



Polls voted on by evan

Lists liked by evan