Reading: How do you remember important quotes from books?

[MeSue]

I highlight my favorite quotes in Marvin for iPad which syncs them back to a custom field in Calibre, and usually I will also add them to my favorite quotes on Goodreads using a customized search shortcut from the Marvin app.

[V.W. Singer]

I don't memorise quotes or mark them. But I remember enough of what I read to remember if something impressed me. If I need to reference it I go back to the book.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Victoria

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.

Because it means a lot of other people agreed that it was meaningful, so you might as well?

[Lemurion]

I go on memory. I enjoy a good turn of phrase, but the only way to tell if it matters to me is to see if I remember it or not. If it really was that important, I'll remember.

[drjenkins]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

I go on memory.

Same here. I don't try to remember "important quotes". I remember "memorable quotes" because they simply stick in my mind.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Most of my e-readers allow me to email quotes to myself, which I tend to do. If I can't do that, or if the quote is exceptionally long, I google part of it and look for the entire thing to cut and paste. Years of memorizing quotes have taught me that I often get a word or two wrong unless I copy the quote out first.

I also highlight important quotes, but reformatting and switching devices often makes the exercise pointless.

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?

Harry's question is exactly the sort that drives many English professors mad. A teacher friend was ranting to me the other day about how his students wouldn't stop asking why they had to memorize a poem when they could copy it to their smartphones. "They'll never learn to be eloquent, the inarticulate lemmings!"

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Harry's question is exactly the sort that drives many English professors mad. A teacher friend was ranting to me the other day about how his students wouldn't stop asking why they had to memorize a poem when they could copy it to their smartphones. "They'll never learn to be eloquent, the inarticulate lemmings!"

I'm afraid I really see no reason for memorising poetry - that's why writing was invented in the first place, so that people didn't have to remember everything.

I have sufficient familiarity with Shakespeare's Sonnets to be able to recognise one when I see it; I have the "Arden Shakespeare" edition of the Sonnets with nice explanations about them all. How does it make me a more eloquent person to memorise them all?

[Tarana]

My sister is one of those people who can remember quotes. I always thought that was strange. Anyway, I started a book of quotes using a blank book almost 30 years ago. Better than copy and paste since it is immune to upgrades. It is also instantly accessible unless I'm on vacation, which is now rare. I mostly keep humurous or witty quotes. Its what gets me through life.

[Junnier]

I am highlighting mental! My Bible is very much falling apart from all the times I've folded it, scribbled in the margins, highlighted passages, underlined words, stuck post-it notes to the margins and even printed out whole articles and stuffed them between pages. My text books aren't far off being in the exact same condition! (I've frightened people who have asked to borrow them!) I can't read something without writing in it, or in some way 'politely defacing' it, unless I really don't like it.

I only read fiction on my Kindle due to not only a severe lack of industry-specific (exercise science) material being available electronically -- and, more importantly, from my retailer of choice; but also due to my real dissatisfaction with the non-fiction ebook experience. As a chronic 'page-rifler', it leaves much to be desired. However, I'll often find at least two lines per book which I want to highlight, anyway. For that, the Kindle's built-in highlighting feature is perfectly sufficient.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm afraid I really see no reason for memorising poetry - that's why writing was invented in the first place, so that people didn't have to remember everything.

Because, Harry, memorizing great writing is a way of building elevated language into the sinews and synapses of one's thought. Every English lit professor knows this, as does virtually every writer -- especially the greats. American poet Robert Gluck has even talked about transcribing Keats's poetry simply to feel what it was like to have that sort of concentrated beauty spill from his pen. J.S. Bach used to learn from other composers by copying out their scores, so the practice is represented in virtually every art -- we've all seen great examples of copied or imitated paintings.

These aren't things that we have to do; they're things we choose to do to counter the everyday hour-by-hour onslaught of mundane thought and feeling. Call it health food for the psyche and sensibility.

If you don't feel the need to do these things, that's fine; no one's going to judge you for living and reading in your own way. But to profess incredulity at anyone who bothers to memorize, quote or transcribe passages of writing that ring true for them shows that you probably haven't understood one of the fundamental ways in which the writers whom you admire learned their craft.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Because, Harry, memorizing great writing is a way of building the style and music of elevated language into the sinews and synapses of a person's thought. Every English lit professor knows this, as does virtually every writer -- especially the greats. American poet Robert Gluck has even talked about transcribing Keats's poetry simply to feel what it was like to have that sort of concentrated beauty spill from his pen. J.S. Bach used to learn from other composers by copying out their scores, so the practice is represented in virtually every art -- we've all seen great examples of copied or imitated paintings.

We must agree to differ. Personally I feel that I am sufficiently "elevated" by reading authors such as Dickens and Shakespeare, without needing to memorise their entire opera.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Personally I feel that I am sufficiently "elevated" by reading authors such as Dickens and Shakespeare, without needing to memorise their entire opera.

It's not necessarily about feeling any more than it is about memorizing another writer's "entire opera." It's about living with certain turns of phrase and modulations of thought until they become a part of your own style and thought.

[BookCat]

It's about living with certain turns of phrase and modulations of thought until they become a part of your own style and thought.

I think that having learnt passages from Shakespeare when at college and uni is the main reason why I can now read his plays as easily as novels. The language is clear in meaning to me because of all the quotes in my head. I had to learn them because they illustrated points which were likely to arise in exams, but I'm so glad that this was necessary.
The words of many other great writers live in my head.

[Geralt]

”memorizing great writing is a way of building elevated language”

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[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by BookCat

I think that having learnt passages from Shakespeare when at college and uni is the main reason why I can now read his plays as easily as novels. The language is clear in meaning to me because of all the quotes in my head. I had to learn them because they illustrated points which were likely to arise in exams, but I'm so glad that this was necessary.
The words of many other great writers live in my head.

Thanks for confirming that the efforts of the teachers I've known (including my late mother) were not entirely pointless. What might seem like a rote process is actually a form of initiation; it can lead to leaps of thought that would never have been experienced otherwise.

The paradox of memorization is that (depending on what's memorized) it can help you to sidestep the detritus of dead language. The worst thing a writer can do is proceed by linking cliche to cliche, since the immediacy of perception dies in the process. Writing aspires to consciousness -- to the driven complexity of being awake -- whereas cliches are to thought what zombies are to us: vapid sleepwalkers whose mindlessness is infectious.