A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight. — Robertson Davies
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all. — Oscar Wilde
Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms. — Angela Carter
The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire. — Michael Chabon
Think before you speak. Read before you think. — Fran Lebowitz
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters. — George Eliot
To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts. — Georg C. Lichtenberg
Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything. — Gwendolyn Brooks
I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once. — C. S. Lewis
Short Reread Quotes
What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can't reread a phone call. — Liz Carpenter
Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable. — Jean Rostand
Rereading, we find a new book. — Mason Cooley
If you must reread old love letters, better pick a room without mirrors. — Mignon McLaughlin
The cruellest thing you can do to Kerouac is reread him at thirty-eight. — Hanif Kureishi
The last book I read was the book I've been rereading most of my life, The Fountainhead. — Vince Vaughn
I was in Venice teaching, so I reread Henry James's "The Wings of the Dove." I love James. — Stephen Greenblatt
When I am so intensely involved with writing my books I don't like to reread them. — Michael Connelly
My husband was getting his sea legs-rereading Joseph Conrad with a side order of C S Forester. — Enid Nemy
I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it's too discouraging. — Gore Vidal
I have read and re-read the Arusha Declaration and found nothing wrong with it except perhaps replacing a few commas here and there... it was clear for some of us that it would only be a mad man who would stand up and defend the Arusha Declaration. — Julius Nyerere
There's no shame in having to fight every day, but fighting every day, and presumably, if you're still alive to hear these words or read this interview, then you are winning your war. You're here. — Jared Padalecki
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go. — Dr. Seuss
When people read erotic symbols into my painting, they're really thinking about their own affairs. — Georgia O'Keeffe
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. — Aldous Huxley
Big thinkers smell and read other big thinkers. If you're urgent and want to get things done fairly urgent, you're in the big thinkers camp. If you got all the time in the world, you ain't part of the big thinker's camp, you get to pick and choose. — Patrick Bet-David
The world needs you. It doesn't need you at a party having read a book about how to appear smart at parties - these books exist, and they're tempting - but resist falling into that trap. The world needs you at the party starting real conversations, saying, 'I don't know,' and being kind. — Charlie Kaufman
Reading aloud and talking about what we're reading sharpens children's brains. It helps develop their ability to concentrate at length, to solve problems logically, and to express themselves more easily and clearly. — Mem Fox
If there's something you really love, something that you're excited to learn, something that you're energized when you hear about, speak about, or read about, that's where you want to throw your energy. — Jay Shetty
So he lent her books. After all, one of life's best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty; more pleasurable still is rereading that book; most pleasurable of all is lending it to the person one loves: Now she is reading or has just read the scene with the mirrors; she who is so lovely is drinking in that loveliness I've drunk. — William T. Vollmann
When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before. — Clifton Fadiman
Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need. — Helen Dunmore
My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure. — Gene Wolfe
We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. — C. S. Lewis
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
Reader's Bill of Rights
1. The right to not read
2. The right to skip pages
3. The right to not finish
4. The right to reread
5. The right to read anything
6. The right to escapism
7. The right to read anywhere
8. The right to browse
9. The right to read out loud
10. The right to not defend your tastes — Daniel Pennac
Rex Stout's narrative and dialogue could not be improved, and he passes the supreme test of being rereadable. I don't know how many times I have reread the Wolfe stories, but plenty. I know exactly what is coming and how it is all going to end, but it doesn't matter. That's writing. — P. G. Wodehouse
I write quickly with a sense of urgency. I don't edit myself out of existence, meaning I'll try to write 50 or 60 pages before I start rereading, revising and editing. That just helps with my confidence. — Anthony Bourdain
I would love to meet J.K. Rowling and tell her how much I admire her writing and am amazed by her imagination. I read every 'Harry Potter' book as it came out and looked forward to each new one. I am rereading them now with my kids and enjoying them every bit as much. She made me look at jelly beans in a whole new way. — Sheryl Sandberg
I'm always nervous about going home, just as I am nervous about rereading books that have meant a lot to me. — Jeanette Winterson
The art (as opposed to the technology) of reading requires that you develop a beautiful tolerance for incomprehension. The greatest books are the books that you come to understand more deeply with time, with age and with rereading. — Michael Silverblatt
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
What a person loves at 20 may seem stupid at 35. That doesn't mean the book was stupid, it means that the time when it spoke to the reader is past. So . . . I'm cautious about rereading favorite books. I hate to spoil the good feelings they created. Keeping the good feelings is more important than rereading the book. Moving on is a good thing. — Carl Deuker
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
Rereading Candide, I was struck by the link between optimism and the optimal, the idea that we have been placed in this optimal world rather than some other. — Mark Ravenhill
One thing I've found that I can do that I really enjoy is rereading my own writing, earlier stories and novels especially. It induces mental time travel, the same way certain songs you hear on the radio do ... the whole thing returns, an eerie feeling that I'm sure you've experienced. — Philip K. Dick
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
I'm a huge classics fan. I love Ernest Hemingway and J.D. Salinger. I'm that guy who rereads a book before I read newer stuff, which is probably not all that progressive, and it's not really going to make me a better reader. I'm like, 'Oh, my God, you should read To Kill a Mockingbird. — John Krasinski
You'll never regret writing any letter out of love. However, it's a good idea to reread anything you've written in anger. — Mary Matalin
Every writer I admire is my teacher. If you look at it, and if you care to read carefully enough and to read and reread a text, you teach yourself something about craft. — Sandra Cisneros
I recently reread an article of mine written in 1964, and I think it is still valid. There is not much difference. Many of the items on the agenda 37 years ago are still there. — Harri Holkeri
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
Rereading this novel today, replaying the moves of its plot, I feel rather like Anderssen fondly recalling his sacrifice of both Rooks to the unfortunate and noble Kieseritsky — Vladimir Nabokov
The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.
(About Books; Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling, New York Times, February 22, 1987) — Anatole Broyard
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
My favorite novel is 'To Kill a Mockingbird' because of its broad sweep, its tackling of big issues in ways that even young minds can make sense of and for the heart of the characters, who span a wide range of ages. I reread it every year. — Ridley Pearson
No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness. — Andre Gide
Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread. — Francois Mauriac
I have never started a novel - I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel - I've never written one without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing. — Joan Didion
Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves. — Russell Banks
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
In an age of malice and bad faith on many sides, I reread White or Thurber or Mitchell and am reminded again that good writing is done, as I said in my elegy for Salinger, with an active eye and ear and an ardent heart, and in no other way. — Adam Gopnik
My first book came out again - the re-issue from 2001. I was rereading it to make sure that I didn't miss any mistakes, and I didn't know who had written some of these stories. I really didn't. I am a different person now. It's weird. I think if stories are good, they have to have a life of their own that's independent of the writer. I like to think of my characters out there in other peoples' heads. That's a nice thing to think about. — Peter Orner
At the age of 9, I read David Copperfield by Dickens. At 14, I read War and Peace by Tolstoy. They're both books I have reread regularly since. — Pierre Berge
When you're rereading or editing your book and you start to expect that this work is going to be reviewed, and you can sort of tell which line is going to show up in reviews. — Nick Laird
Salinger is such a terrific writer; he did so many great things. He is one of those writers that I still reread, simply because he makes me see the possibilities and makes me feel like writing. There are certain writers who put you in the mood to write. In the way a whiff of a cigar will bring back memories of a ballgame on a Saturday afternoon, reading Salinger makes me want to get to the typewriter. — Robert Cormier
In Conclusion
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