Reread Quotes

It's an amazing phenomenon: Every time I reread your letter that says "Ask me for anything," I find there is nothing more I need or want. ~ Sarah Henstra

They would go back to their homes and put me to rest, a letter from the past never reopened or reread. ~ Alice Sebold

That I am your heart's secret fills me with song. I wish I could sing of you here in my cage. You are my heart's hidden poem. I reread you, memorize you every moment we're apart. ~ Laura Whitcomb

If you must reread old love letters, better pick a room without mirrors. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

What would you like your greatest legacy to be for your child? What will you do to ensure that your child attains that legacy? Write a letter to yourself describing your hopes and dreams for your child---the legacy you would like to leave. Reread your letter often. ~ Michele Borba

Poems are endlessly renewable resources. Whatever you bring to them, at whatever stage of life, gets mirrored back, refracted, reread in new ways. ~ Jonathan Galassi

I reread 'Nicholas and Alexandra' in my early twenties, and I never forgot the story. ~ Kathryn Harrison

It's only in books--actual printed books--that you can easily start and stop your reading, that you can preread and reread, and, these days, as the book itself suffers from a cluster of plagues, it seems only right to pause and assert that the books that ought to be rescued these days are not the books that require a "spoiler alert"--such books are already spoiled--but books that aren't spoiled even if you know what's going to happen, even if you peek at the end, even if you're reading them for a second, or fifth, or dozenth time. ~ J.C. Hallman

Her father said it took at least five years to learn law after one left law school: one practiced economy for two years, learned Alabama Pleading for two more, reread the Bible and Shakespeare for the fifth. ~ Harper Lee

Lucien bent and searched through the scraps of paper at Loki's stone feet for the blood-kissed prayer Dante had placed among them. Finding it, he plucked it from the pile and straightened.
The fading essence of creawdwr blood magic tingled against his fingers. Unfolding the liquor store receipt, he read the words scrawled in Dante's lefty slant:
Watch over her, ma mère. S'il te plaît, keep her safe. Even from me.
Lucien reread the prayer until the words blurred. He closed his fingers around the receipt, the paper crinkling against his palm. He had no doubt who she was - Special Agent Heather Wallace.
Wounded, his child, yes. Damaged, yes. But Dante's heart was whole and in love, it seemed, with a mortal. Perhaps Heather Wallace could bind Dante and help keep his sanity from unraveling.
Insanity. The fate of an unbound creawdwr. ~ Adrian Phoenix

Remember all those classic books you HAD to read in school? They sucked, right? Well, guess what? They are actually . . . classics. 'Brave New World', '1984', 'The Martian Chronicles' and even 'Animal Farm' are pretty cool it you're not told you HAVE to read them. If you discover them on your own or if you reread them without having a report due that sends you scurrying to buy CliffNotes or access Wikipedia, then you can actually relax and enjoy them.
- Chris Mancini ~ Graham Elwood

One great aim of revision is to cut out. In the exuberance of composition it is natural to throw in - as one does in speaking - a number of small words that add nothing to meaning but keep up the flow and rhythm of thought. In writing, not only does this surplusage not add to meaning, it subtracts from it. Read and revise, reread and revise, keeping reading and revising until your text seems adequate to your thought. ~ Jacques Barzun

Comics are not theatre - there's a very important difference in that the reader controls the page. You can linger on a page of comics as long as you want. You can read and go forward and then move back; you can reread, in one sitting or at your leisure. You can take as much time as you want to take in that story. ~ Kelly Sue DeConnick

Roland was so used to the pervasive sense of failure that he was unprepared for the blood-rush of success. He breathed differently. The dingy little room humped around in his vision briefly and settled at a different distance, an object of interest, not of choking confinement. He reread his letters. The world opened. [ ... ] How true it was that one needed to be seen by others to be sure of one's own existence. Nothing in what he had written had changed and everything had changed. ~ A.S. Byatt

Morse code didn't leave a paper trail, or an email thread on the screen of your tablet. She would never be able to scroll back and reread the exchange she'd just had with Rufus. ~ Neal Stephenson

A few words which he wanted to emphasize were put into brackets or set off by quotation marks. My first impulse was to point out to him that it was ridiculous to put slang words and expressions between quotation marks, for that prevents them from entering the language. But I decided not to. When I received his letters, his parentheses made me shudder. At first, it was a shudder of slight shame, disagreeable. Later (and now, when I reread them) the shudder was the same, but I know, by some indefinable, imperceptible change, that it is a shudder of love- it is both poignant and delightful, perhaps because of the memory of the word shame that accompanied it in the beginning. Those parentheses and quotation marks are the flaw on the hip, the beauty mark on the thigh whereby my friend showed that he was himself, irreplaceable, and that he was wounded. ~ Jean Genet

When I wrote 'The Pregnant Widow' three or four years ago, I tried to reread my first novel, 'The Rachel Papers,' because their young heroes are the same age. I couldn't finish it. It seemed to me so technically slapdash and weak. ~ Martin Amis

Incidentally, I use the word reader very loosely. Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the very first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is-a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)-a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only ~ Vladimir Nabokov

To me, re-reading my favorite books is like spending time with my best friends.
I'd never be satisfied to limit myself to just one experience each with my favorite people. ~ C.S. Lewis

For the last several days I've had the sudden and general urge to buy a new book. I've stopped off at a few bookstores around the city, and while I've looked at hundreds and hundreds of books in that time, I have not found the one book that will satisfy my urge. It's not as if I don't have anything to read; there's a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room I've been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust that's afflicted me most of my life. I know enough about the course of the disease to know I'll discover something soon. ~ Lewis Buzbee

Poems are surmountable. They have rhymes and rhythms to help you make meaning. They're short enough. . . to read and reread until you've made some sense of them. Short stories are a different ballgame. You read them and understand the words completely. You know what happens in each sentence. You follow the dialogue and action. at the end, you know exactly what's happened. And also you have no idea. ~ Laurie Frankel

I don't think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread - Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks. ~ Ian Rankin

Truth and reread it daily: "When you seek happiness for yourself it will always elude you. When you seek happiness for others you will find it yourself." Practice making meaningful ~ Wayne W. Dyer

My spirits were so glum I almost overlooked the two letters waiting on my writing table.
When I did see them, my heart gave one of those painful thumps, and I wondered if these were letters of rejection. The top one had my name written out in a bold, slanting hand, with flourishing letter-ends and underlining. I pulled it open.

My Dear Meliara:
You cannot deny me the pleasure of your company on a picnic this afternoon. I will arrange everything. All you need to do is appear and grace the day with your beautiful smile. To meet you will be some of our mutual friends…

Named were several people, all of whom I knew, and it ended with a promise of undying admiration. It was signed Russav.
Could it be an elaborate joke, with me as the butt, as a kind of revenge for my social lapse? I reread the note several times, dismissing automatically the caressing tone--I knew it for more of his flirtatious style. Finally I realized that I did not see Tamara's name among the guests, though just about all of the others had been at the party the night before.
A cold sensation washed through me. I had the feeling that if anyone was being made a butt, it was not Meliara Astiar, social lapse notwithstanding.
I turned to the next letter and was glad to see the plain script of my Unknown:

Meliara--
In keeping faith with your stated desire to have the truth of my observations, permit me to observe that you have a remarkable ability to win ~ Sherwood Smith

To gain more from your time in the Scripture, you should read and reread the passage. You must know what the passage says before you can understand what it means and how it applies to you and your ministry. You should: Read to determine, "What does this passage say to me?" Begin by reading the passage to determine what the Scripture is all about. Record what you see. It is extremely important that you write some notes and keep a record of your insights and questions. Mark unfamiliar words or phrases that you do not understand; and write your answers in your journal or study notes. ~ Bishop Noel Jones

I can no more reread my own books than I can watch old home movies or look at snapshots of myself as a child. I wind up sitting on the floor, paralyzed by grief and nostalgia. ~ Francine Prose

April ended and May came along, but May was even worse than April. In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance of magnolias hung in the air, my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would pass....but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind.
At those times I would write to Naoko. In my letters to her, I would describe only things that were touching or pleasant or beautiful: the fragrance of grasses, the caress of a spring breeze, the light of the moon, a movie I'd seen, a song I liked, a book that had moved me. I myself would be comforted by letters like this when I would reread what I had written. And I would feel that the world I lived in was a wonderful one. I wrote any number of letters like this, but from Naoko or Reiko I heart nothing. ~ Haruki Murakami

It was a daunting prospect, to speak honestly from the heart without the benefit of time to come up with the ideal words, to reread them, revise them, and proofread. To second-guess them before putting them out into the world. There's no deleting things you say out loud. ~ Kristin Rockaway

I'm no prophet, but I'm guessing that comic books will always be strong. I don't think anything can really beat the pure fun and pleasure of holding a magazine in your hand, reading the story on paper, being able to roll it up and put it in your pocket, reread again later, show it to a friend, carry it with you, toss it on a shelf, collect them, have a lot of magazines lined up and read them again as a series. I think young people have always loved that. I think they always will. ~ Stan Lee

He read and reread 'Ulysses'. He looked back at Amy. They were the first beautiful thing I ever knew, Dorrigo Evans said. ~ Richard Flanagan

Keep your hand moving. (Don't pause to reread the line you have just written. That's stalling and trying to get control of what you're saying.) ~ Natalie Goldberg

A book
the book that was, for some reason, THE book
can be reread, unchanged. Only we have changed. And that makes all the difference. ~ Anna Quindlen

I don't reread my books after they're published, because it's agony. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

The point is that we already know it doesn't work out, but we reread them anyway, because the good stuff that comes before the ending is worth it." This ~ Emery Lord

Here and throughout the Gospels, Jesus does not simply cite Scripture as though it were a self-evident, self-interpreting source of authority. He rereads it, drawing out new, often highly provocative meanings, "fulfilling" it in a way that gives it new form for a new day. What would Jesus do? Reread. The Bible tells me so. ~ Timothy Beal

I never had a book get angry or yell at me, never had a book show disappointment in me or consider me stupid because I didn't understand a line or needed to reread a paragraph or didn't know a word, never had a book mock me, never had a book turn its back on me or slap me in the face or fire me from reading it or decide it was in love with a faster, more intelligent, handsomer reader, I never even had a book get bored with me, or question my logic, I never had a book look suddenly crestfallen because I shut it and left it on its own, I've never met a book too shy to come into the bathroom with me or under the covers, I never met a book that refused to read me to sleep. ~ Mark Frutkin

Cakes are like books: There are new ones you want to read and old favorites you want to reread. ~ Ellen Rose

read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet. ~ Robert W. Chambers

So this is supposed to be the how, and when, and why, and what or reading - about the way that, when reading is going well, one book leads to another and to another, a paper trail of theme and meaning; and how, when it's going badly, when books don't stick or take, when your mood and the mood of the book are fighting like cats, you'd rather do anything but attempt the next paragraph, or reread the last one for the tenth time. "We talked about books," says a character in Charles Baxter's wonderful Feast of Love, "how boring they were to read, but how you loved them anyway. Anyone who hasn't felt like that isn't owning up. ~ Nick Hornby

I often reread passages of "Lolita" for its exquisite language. To me, "Lolita" has no message, no purpose, other than to exist as a marvel of literary creation. It has wit, intelligence and style. It pointedly makes no attempt to serve a higher moral purpose, and previous attempts by critics to find one have proven ludicrous. The annotated edition is accompanied by a brilliant afterword by Nabokov that is a lucid reminder of the pure joy of writing, its interplay with life. ~ Amy Tan

The truth is I'm a chicken shit coward who's afraid of a girl like you. When I'm with you, I want things I never thought I'd be able to have, or deserved, and that scares me a little. I'm just a regular guy who works in a bar and you're this beautiful person who shines brighter than the stars.
I think I just made up some cheesy poetry so I'll stop while I'm ahead.
If you feel like talking, give me a call.
~D
Sophie sat down on the floor and, through blurry eyes, reread the note so many times she had it memorized.
She was going to do more than give him a call. ~ Jenny Lyn

Dear dad,
in consequence of a trivial altercation with a Captain Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge, whom I happened to step upon in the corridor of a train, I had a pistol duel this morning in the woods near Kalugano and am now no more. Though the manner of my end can be regarded as a kind of easy suicide, the encounter and the ineffable Captain are in no way connected with the Sorrows of Young Veen. In 1884, during my first summer in Ardis, I seduced your daughter, who was then twelve. Our torrid affair lasted till my return to Riverlane; it was resumed last June, four years later. That happiness has been the greatest event in my life, and I have no regrets. Yesterday, though, I discovered she had been unfaithful to me, so we parted. Tapper, I think, may be the chap who was thrown out of one of your gaming clubs for attempting oral intercourse with the washroom attendant, a toothless old cripple, veteran of the first Crimean War. Lots of flowers, please!
Your loving son, Van

He carefully reread his letter – and carefully tore it up. The note he finally placed in his coat pocket was much briefer.

Dad,
I had a trivial quarrel with a stranger whose face I slapped and who killed me in a duel near Kalugano. Sorry!
Van ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Sydney: Can I ask you a question? Me: As long as you promise never again to start a question off with whether or not you can propose a question. Sydney: Okay, asshole. I know I shouldn't be thinking about him at all, but I'm curious. What did he wrote on that paper when we went to get my purse? And what did you write back that made hit you? Me: I agree that you shouldn't be thinking about him at all, but I'm honestly shocked it's taken you this long to ask me about it. Sydney: Well? Ugh. I hate writing it verbatim, but she wants to know, so ... Me: He wrote "Are you fucking her?" Sydney: OMG! What a prick! Me: Yep. Sydney: So what did you say back to him that made him punch you? Me: I write, "Why do you think I'm here for her purse? I gave her a hundred for tonight, and now she owes me change." I reread the text, and I'm not so sure it sounds as funny as I thought it did. ~ Colleen Hoover

Dear Mr. Peter Van Houten
(c/o Lidewij Vliegenthart),

My name is Hazel Grace Lancaster. My friend Augustus Waters, who read An Imperial Affliction at my recommendationtion, just received an email from you at this address. I hope you will not mind that Augustus shared that email with me.

Mr. Van Houten, I understand from your email to Augustus that you are not planning to publish any more books. In a way, I am disappointed, but I'm also relieved: I never have to worry whether your next book will live up to the magnificent perfection of the original. As a three-year survivor of Stage IV cancer, I can tell you that you got everything right in An Imperial Affliction. Or at least you got me right. Your book has a way of telling me what I'm feeling before I even feel it, and I've reread it dozens of times.

I wonder, though, if you would mind answering a couple questions I have about what happens after the end of the novel. I understand the book ends because Anna dies or becomes too ill to continue writing it, but I would really like to mom-wether she married the Dutch Tulip Man, whether she ever has another child, and whether she stays at 917 W. Temple etc. Also, is the Dutch Tulip Man a fraud or does he really love them? What happens to Anna's friends-particularly Claire and Jake? Do they stay that this is the kind of deep and thoughtful question you always hoped your readers would ask-what becomes of Sisyphus the Hamster? These questio ~ John Green

Reading off a page is like looking down at a landscape from a balloon – your eye "sees" the story as well as reads it, its layout, its paragraphs and structure, and "remembers" what it just read because it's still there, on the page, simultaneously. If you want to, you can reread any line instantly; or linger; or speed up; or optically "flinch." Reading a series of tweets is more like looking through a narrow window from a train speeding through a landscape full of tunnels and bands of light and dark. Each tweet erases its predecessor. ~ David Mitchell

When you reread your journal you find out that your newest discovery is something you already found out five years ago. ~ Thomas Merton

I have often reread my early progress reports and seen the illiteracy, the childish naivete, the mind of low intelli­gence peering from a dark room, through the keyhole, at the dazzling light outside. In my dreams and memories I've seen Charlie smiling happily and uncertainly at what people around him were saying. Even in my dullness I knew I was inferior. Other people had something I lacked - something denied me. In my mental blindness, I had be­lieved it was somehow connected with the ability to read and write, and I was sure that if I could get those skills I would have intelligence too.

Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men. ~ Daniel Keyes

I don't know how these couples do it, spend hours each night tucking their kids in, reading them books about misguided kittens or seals who wear uniforms, and then reread them if the child so orders. In my house, our parents put us to bed with two simple words: "Shut up." That was always the last thing we heard before our lights were turned off. Our artwork did not hang on the refrigerator or anywhere near it, because our parents recognized it for what it was: crap. They did not live in a child's house, we lived in theirs. ~ David Sedaris

Clip your year-end column and put it away for 10 years. See if you don't feel like an idiot when you reread it. ~ Steve Albini

But that mimosa grove - the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since."
"this then is my story. i have reread it. it has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies. at this or that twist of it i feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than i care to probe. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

We read and reread the words of the original text in order to penetrate through them, to reach, to touch the vision or experience which prompted them. We then gather up what we have found there and take this quivering almost wordless 'thing' and place it behind the language into which it needs to be translated. And now the principal task is to persuade the host language to take in and welcome the 'thing' which is waiting to be articulated. ~ John Berger

It is time, and long past time, to reread the gospels as what we can only call political theology - not because they are not after all about God and spirituality and new birth and holiness and all the rest, but precisely because they are. ~ N. T. Wright

I could stay depressed about my bad memory, but that's a negative way to live. Let's look on the bright side and list the advantages of having a bad memory.
(1) You can reread a book and see a movie over and over and enjoy it as much as the first time.
(2) If you make an inconvenient promise, you can pretend that you forgot about it and still be forgiven.
(3) This is the most important thing: you can keep coming up with ideas without being held back by convictions or the past. ~ Hirohiko Araki

When I am so intensely involved with writing my books I don't like to reread them. ~ Michael Connelly

I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life, and partly to have the sense of returning to an old friend. ~ Elizabeth Strout

Not only did I avoid speaking of Salinger; I resisted thinking about him. I did not reread his letters to me. The experience had been too painful. ~ Joyce Maynard

Write a list of ways that you have benefited from being married to your spouse. Then write a list of your spouse's positive patterns and qualities. Keep adding to the lists and reread them frequently. ~ Zelig Pliskin

I re-read a lot of books that I like a lot. There are some books that I try to reread every couple of years. A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life. ~ Alan Lightman

I found the role model to inspire me to handle such situations with more grace, maturity, and, most important of all, results...

I reread Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and I realized I had found my hero in Atticus Finch...

It hit me like a thunderbolt. You see, Atticus knows everything Huck knows. He knows society is racist. He recognizes the violence, hypocrisy, injustice, and ignorance of society. He knows he is going to lose.

But Atticus does not light out for the territory. He goes into the courtroom to fight the fight as best as he can, because it is what he believes in. He doesn't do it because of the law, or the rules, or what people will think. He has his own code, and he lives by it as well as he can.

I still cry when I think about this. My classroom is my courtroom. I am going to lose more than I win. There are many times when, despite my efforts, I will lose children to poverty, ignorance, and, most tragically, a society that embraces mediocrity...

I've made plenty of mistakes since rediscovering Atticus, but I've always been able to hold my head up to my students. Atticus showed me the way. ~ Rafe Esquith

About some books we feel that our reluctance to return to them is the true measure of our admiration. It is hard to suppose that many people go back, from a spontaneous desire, to reread 1984: there is neither reason nor need to, no one forgets it. The usual distinctions between forgotten details and a vivid general impression mean nothing here, for the book is written out of one passionate breath, each word is bent to a severe discipline of meaning, everything is stripped to the bareness of terror.
Kafka's The Trial is also a book of terror, but it is a paradigm and to some extent a puzzle, so that one may lose oneself in the rhythm of the paradigm and play with the parts of the puzzle. Kafka's novel persuades us that life is inescapably hazardous and problematic, but the very 'universality' of this idea helps soften its impact: to apprehend the terrible on the plane of metaphysics is to lend it an almost soothing aura. ~ Irving Howe

The last line of Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen is addressed to the American people and their congressmen. "As they deal with me and my people, kindly, generously, and justly, so may the Great Ruler of all nations deal with the grand and glorious nation of the United States of America." It's clever to imply that if the U.S. swallows up her little country, God will smite it. As I reread the last sentance of a book written by a Hawaiian queen wh was taught to read and write by American missionaries, her final thought seems emblematic of how hierarchical Hawaiians adapted to Christianity. Jehovah, "the Great Ruler of all nations," is the highest high chief in the universe. ~ Sarah Vowell

I must say, when I reread myself, it's the poetry I tend to look at. It's the most exciting to write, and it's over the quickest. ~ John Updike

There's a paradox in rereading. You read the first time for rediscovery: an encounter with the confirming emotions. But you reread for discovery: you go to the known to figure out the workings of the unknown, the why of the familiar how. ~ Cynthia Ozick

Reread that quote carefully. If you are not the master of yourself, then by this definition you are not free. You do not have to be overtly powerful and exert influence over others to be free, nor is it necessary to intimidate others, nor to try to bully people into submission in order to prove your own mastery. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

I don't often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept. ~ Anne McCaffrey

5 stars = If I weren't taken, I'd marry this book and have its delightful little book babies.

4 stars = goin' steady (or whatever you crazy kids call it these days). So good I'd read it again.

3 stars = A great, one-time fling. I enjoyed it but it probably won't be a reread.

2 stars and below = The pretty thing didn't make it past the pick-up line. I don't rate these because I don't finish them. ~ Eliza Crewe

Rich people don't have to have a life-and-death relationship with the truth and its questions; they can ignore the truth and still thrive materially. I am not surprised many of them understand literature only as an ornament. Life is an ornament to them, relationships are ornaments, their "work" is but a flimsy, pretty ornament meant to momentarily thrill and capture attention. Why didn't I reread my F. Scott Fitzgerald sooner? I might have saved myself some time. ~ Sergio Troncoso

I suppose that words, timely and arranged in the right order, produce an afterglow. When you read words like that in a book, beautiful words, a powerful but fleeting emotion ensues. And you also know that soon, it'll all be gone: the concept you just grasped and the emotion it produced. Then comes a need to possess that strange, ephemeral afterglow, and to hold on to that emotion. So you reread, underline, and perhaps even memorize and transcribe the words somewhere – in a notebook, on a napkin, on your hand. ~ Valeria Luiselli

I reread An Imperial Affliction until Mom woke up and rolled over toward me around six. She nuzzled her head against my shoulder, which felt uncomfortable and vaguely Augustinian. ~ John Green

I read Ivan's messages over and over, thinking about what they meant. I felt ashamed, but why? Why was it more honorable to reread and interpret a novel like Lost Illusions than to reread and interpret some email from Ivan? Was it because Ivan wasn't as good a writer as Balzac? (But I thought Ivan was a good writer.) Was it because Balzac's novels had been read and analyzed by hundreds of professors, so that reading and interpreting Balzac was like participating in a conversation with all these professors, and was therefore a higher and more meaningful activity than reading an email only I could see? But the fact that the email had been written specifically to me, in response to things I had said, made it literally a conversation, in the way that Balzac's novels - written for a general audience, ultimately in order to turn a profit for the printing industry - were not; and so wasn't what I was doing in a way more authentic, and more human? ~ Elif Batuman

Those who cannot understand what they've read should probably reread it. ~ Gene Ambaum

I reread my grandmother's letter and realized with a deep sense of contentment that I had not had to change at all in order to have every hope for happiness in life. I had not had to learn to sing for company or to behave like Cecily or to stop twirling. I could be myself and be loved deeply. I was, in fact, a lot like Meg, who had always been a racehorse, I just hadn't known it. ~ Julianne Donaldson

I don't read reviews about myself with any special eagerness or attention unless they are masterpieces of wit and acumen, and I never reread them. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

With "The Thousand and One Nights", I learned and never forgot that we should read only those books that force us to reread them. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Jean Louise grinned. Her father said it took at least five years to learn law after one left law school: one practiced economy for two years, learned Alabama Pleading for two more, reread the Bible and Shakespeare for the fifth. Then one was fully equipped to hold on under any conditions. ~ Harper Lee

Well it's always been an interesting area for me. In referencing something I just reread from Dogen it says, "Enlightenment doesn't break the person anymore than the reflection breaks the water" and Suzuki in his commentary is saying you don't lose your personality once you acquire some sort of Buddhist understanding. ~ Brad Warner

I reread Mesrine's book every year because the way the story is told is fascinating. Today, we don't have gangsters like Mesrine - he had humor. ~ Thomas Langmann

I'm following it perfectly. Although, if this were a novel, I'd take the trouble to reread the last paragraph as carefully as possible. ~ Cesar Aira

I reread these negative remarks and realize that I do not know whether music can despair of music or marble of marble. I do know that literature is an art that can foresee the time when it will be silenced, an art that can become inflamed with its own virtue, fall in love with its own decline, and court its own demise. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

As it is my practice here to conceal nothing, I shall relate on this page the episode of the wall. Virigilia and Lobo Neves were soon to sail. Entering Dona Placida's house, I saw on the table a folded piece of paper. It was a note from Virgilia. It said that she would be waiting for me in the garden at sundown, without fail. It concluded, "The wall is low on the side toward the little path."
I made a gesture of displeasure. The letter seemed to me extraordinary audacious, ill-considered, and even ridiculous. It not only invited scandal, it invited it together with laughter and sneers. I pictured myself leaping over the wall and caught in the act by an officer of the law, who led me off to jail. "The wall is low…" And what if it was low? Obviously Virgilia did not know what she was doing; perhaps by now she wished she had not sent the note. I looked at it, a small piece of paper, wrinkled by inflexible. I felt an urge to tear it in thirty thousand pieces and to throw it to the wind as the last vestige of my adventure; but I did not do so. Self-love, shame at the thought of fleeing from danger…There was no way out; I would have to go.
"Tell her I'll go."
"Where?" asked Dona Placida.
"Where she said she would wait for me."
"She said nothing to me."
"In this note."
Dona Placida stared. "But this paper, I found it this morning in your drawer, and I thought that…"
I felt a queer sensation. I reread the paper and looked at it a long t ~ Machado De Assis

Reread your old words to remind yourself how strongly you survived everything which you once thought would break you into pieces. ~ Nitya Prakash

We possess the Canon because we are mortal and also rather belated. There is only so much time, and time must have a stop, while there is more to read than there ever was before. From the Yahwist and Homer to Freud, Kafka, and Beckett is a journey of nearly three millennia. Since that voyage goes past harbors as infinite as Dante, Chaucer, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, all of whom amply compensate a lifetime's rereadings, we are in the pragmatic dilemma of excluding something else each time we read or reread extensively. ~ Harold Bloom

I reread the Odyssey at that time, which I had first read in school and remembered as a story of a homecoming.But it is not a story of a homecoming. How could the Greeks who knew that one never enters the same river twice, believe in homecoming? Odysseus does not return home to stay, but to set off again. The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. ~ Bernhard Schlink

Reread favourite books as if you are taking apart a clock ~ Lemony Snicket

You can reread not from love or hatred but from a sense, often inchoate, that there's more to this book than you have ben yet able to receive. ~ Alan Jacobs

So, what do you do when you know you have two days to live? Eat an entire Bitter Chocolate Death cake all by myself. Reread my favorite novel. Buy eight dozen roses from the best florist in town
the super expensive ones, the ones that smell like roses rather than merely looking like them
and put them all over my apartment. Take a good long look at everyone I love. ~ Robin McKinley

In answer to the question, "Shouldn't the commandments be rewritten?," someone thoughtfully replied, "No, they should be reread." ~ Richard L. Evans

There have been times when I reread - or at least leafed through - something because I'd sent a copy to a friend, and what usually happened was that I noticed dozens and dozens of clumsy phrases I wished I could rewrite. ~ Peter Straub

I probably reread novels more often than I read new ones. The novel form is made for rereading. Novels are by their nature too long, too baggy, too full of things – you can't hold them completely in your mind. This isn't a flaw – it's part of the novel's richness: its length, multiplicity of aspects, and shapelessness resemble the length and shapelessness of life itself. By the time you reach the end of the novel you will have forgotten the beginning and much of what happens in between: not the main outlines but the fine work, the detail and the music of the sentences – the particular words, through which the novel has its life. You think you know a novel so well that there must be nothing left in it to discover but the last time I reread Emma I found a little shepherd boy, brought into the parlour to sing for Harriet when she's staying with the Martin family. I'm sure he was never in the book before. ~ Tessa Hadley

When I have my manuscript finished, more or less, I type it myself, with two fingers. I type fast with two fingers. And then when it's ready, I reread, recorrect, and retype it. Everything is my own work. I do not give it to secretaries or to typists. ~ Elie Wiesel

I rise at 6. Strong coffee helps me face the paper edition of 'The New York Times.' It daily challenges my own capacity for faking anything deranged enough to sound true. I work till 2 P.M. unless I am in the throes of finishing something. I rewrite to be reread. ~ Allan Gurganus

I keep three kinds of books: those I want to read, those I want to reread, and those I want to reopen just to confirm how bad they are. ~ Sarah Manguso

The Massachusetts elite had read everything in sight, some of it too closely. As would be said of logic-loving Ipswich minister John Wise, those men were not so much the masters as the victims of learning. They had read and reread bushels of witchcraft texts. They parsed legal code. They knew their history. They worked in the sterling name of reason. ~ Stacy Schiff

There's always another story. When you read a book again and let your imagination take over, it can take you to new stories, so it's like a book inside the book! ~ Kate Westerlund

I don't reread my books. ~ Graham Swift

I tend not to reread books, because there's always something new to discover, but Dorothy Sayers is a comfort grab for me - there's no mood so bleak or cold so bad that Lord Peter and Bunter can't make it right. ~ Laura Anne Gilman

Usually when I put together a book like this Death-Ray hardcover or that Ghost World special edition, then I have to reread it and see if there is anything I want to change or any re-coloring I want to do. That's when I'm faced with the actual work. When I'm working, I'm too close to it. I'm sort of inside, and I can't see it at all. So when I have that experience of rereading it years later, it's jarring. ~ Daniel Clowes

I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it's too discouraging. ~ Gore Vidal

I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression, and airs of personal immunity-how ill they sit on the face, say,of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favourite author! I read and reread, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers. ~ E. M. Forster

Anyway, those things would not have lasted long.
The experience of the years shows it to me.
But Destiny arrived in some haste and stopped them.
The beautiful life was brief.
But how potent were the perfumes,
On how splendid a bed we lay,
To what sensual delight we gave our bodies.
An echo of the days of pleasure,
An echo of the days drew near me,
A little of the fire of the youth of both of us,
Again I took in my hands a letter,
And I read and reread till the light was gone.
And melancholy, I came out on the balcony
Came out to change my thoughts at least by looking at
A little of the city that I loved,
A little movement on the street and in the shops.
Translated by Rae Dalven ~ Constantine P. Cavafy