“I always feel as if I'm struggling to become someone else. As if I'm trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality. I suppose it's part of growing up, yet it's also an attempt to re-invent myself. By becoming a different me, I could free myself of everything. I seriously believed I could escape myself - as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I'm still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as I'll come to defining myself.”
― South of the Border, West of the Sun
― South of the Border, West of the Sun
“If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen.”
― South of the Border, West of the Sun
― South of the Border, West of the Sun
“I'm scared," she said. "These days I feel like a snail without a shell." "I'm scared too," I said. "I feel like a frog without any webs." She looked up and smiled. Wordlessly we walked over to a shaded part of the building and held each other and kissed, a shell-less snail and a webless frog.”
― South of the Border, West of the Sun
― South of the Border, West of the Sun
“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.”
― Kafka on the Shore
― Kafka on the Shore
Randel’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Randel’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Favorite Genres
Art, Biography, Classics, Comics, Contemporary, Crime, Ebooks, Fantasy, Fiction, Graphic novels, Historical fiction, History, Horror, Manga, Music, Mystery, Non-fiction, Philosophy, Poetry, Romance, Science fiction, Suspense, Spirituality, Thriller, and Travel
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