Reading: How do you remember important quotes from books?

[EbookNovice]

Hi all, I just bought my first Android tablet. I bought it so that I can read PDF files. I want to mainly read PDF e-books that are of interest to me. I bought Mantano Premium, but if there's a better PDF reader I don't mind buying it. My idea was to highlight quotes and then take screenshots of the quotes so I can view them at a later date.

I wanted to know what the experienced people on here did to remember quotes from ebooks they find valuable and worth viewing at a later date.

I spoke to a real life friend earlier and he said he doesn't keep quotes of books he reads because he says he's able to remember all the books he's read.

[kyteflyer]

Wow, I'm impressed. Sometimes I cant even remember what books I read, let alone detail of the content. IOW, I dont remember. Highlighting and screenshotting seems good to me, or if you have a way to export them, even better.

[Geralt]

Originally Posted by EbookNovice

I spoke to a real life friend earlier and he said he doesn't keep quotes of books he reads because he says he's able to remember all the books he's read.

I don't believe him one bit. Not unless he reads 2 books per year.
Probably he remembers the general idea of the content and doesn't care about quotes.

Anyway, I usually just highlight on the copy of the document. Or scribble down stuff, circle a paragraph, things like that. My tablet came with a stylus, so reading a PDF is pretty much the same as reading a paper book in regard to note taking and the bonus is I don't damage the book/document. I usually do this for study. I use ezPDF on my android tablet.
I don't export them, but ezPDF does support that.

Books I read for stories and entertainment I read exclusively on PW2.
Edit: forgot to add.
I don't necessarily consider quotes from novels 'important'. But if I do like some, I usually highlight them on kindle, and if I really really like them, I add them on Goodreads and like them from my Goodreads account.

However, it's safe to say that my favorite quote from Neil Gaiman's American Gods, is not of same importance as something I need to learn to pass an exam or write a paper.

So my question to you is do you need these quotes for study or entertainment?

I tend to highlight phrases in a book that stand out for me. That's more of a short term memory method though. Mostly I just store quotes I really like in my portable biological based memory system. I don't even have to get the exact wording, just close enough to be able to use Google to find it later.

[Love.Forever.]

If there's a quote that I truly enjoy, I write it down or put a sticky tag on the page so I can go back to it

[mojos]

I just highlight the quotes or bookmark the page with the quote with a sticky note.

[tubemonkey]

I don't bother to remember them, because they aren't important to me. A book is simple entertainment. When I'm done with one, I move on to another one.

[BookCat]

When I did lit at uni, I recorded important passages onto cassette tape and would play these tapes over and over when I was doing stuff like getting ready to go out etc. Eventually, they stuck in my head the way the words of a song do. I suppose the modern equivalent would be to record them onto computer and create an mp3 file to load onto a player or phone.

I'd recommend using the freeware Audacity for this.

[HarryT]

I don't understand in what way a quote from a book can be "important". Why is it necessary to remember it at all?

[Jessica Lares]

Write it down, I keep a small Field Notes ($1 knockoff ) for that reason.

If you want to do it electronically, I think keeping them away from the actual book would be best. Use something like JotterPad X: Writer (or similar) and copy & paste, noting the page number.

Obviously EbookNovice isn't asking about making general notes, but those few sentences in books that really stand out at you.

[8andout]

When I was at uni, I would take a photo on my smartphone of the relevant page/passage, and also of the copyright page so i could cite it. Often I would do this in the library so I wouldn't have to take the books out and deprive others of them.

[Billi]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't understand in what way a quote from a book can be "important". Why is it necessary to remember it at all?

Because they teach us something about life that we didn't know before? Or they speak out what we've felt since long but couldn't put into proper words? Or are just beautiful or surprising or funny?

If you're interested in quotes you will find many great examples in this thread:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82285

Originally Posted by Billi

Because they teach us something about life that we didn't know before? Or they speak out what we've felt since long but couldn't put into proper words? Or are just beautiful or surprising or funny?

If you're interested in quotes you will find many great examples in this thread:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82285

Absolutely.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I don't bother to remember them, because they aren't important to me. A book is simple entertainment. When I'm done with one, I move on to another one.

That.

The last time I highlighted any quotes when reading was back when I was in college and needed to remember them to include them in papers I was writing.

If some turn of phrase or cogent observation strikes my fancy when I'm reading, I have a tendency to remember it anyway. But I tend not to read books in order to reflect upon the state of human existence or civilization; I read for entertainment, scientific/historical curiosity and escapism. I've served my time in the real world so I know all I need to know about human motivations; been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

I'm simply not interested in highlighting bits of books in order to go back to ruminate on them at a later date.

[Victoria]

I don't find stand-alone quotes meaningful either, and as Xanthe says, maybe it is related to age. If a passage is moving or insightful, I pause and enjoy it. Same with humour - it's part of a whole, and needs the context to be funny. However, I do reread favourite books, so maybe that is a related experience.

I *really * don't understand the e-reader feature that let's you turn on quotes marked by other readers. I can't see how an amalgam of strangers' highlighting could be meaningful.