“Read solid books, history, biography and travel—and above all take notes on what you read. Reading without note taking is as senseless as eating without digesting. It is easy to condense into a single page all that you really want to remember out of a big book, and there you have it for reference for ever. When you have done that systematically, for five years, you will be surprised at the extraordinary amount of available information which you can turn upon any subject, all at the cost of very little trouble.”
– Arthur Conan Doyle, quoted in On Conan Doyle, by Michael Dirda
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“Wherever and whatever I read, I have to have a pencil, not a pen—preferably a stub of a pencil so I can get close to the words, underline well-turned sentences, brilliant or stupid ideas, interesting words and bits of information, and write short or elaborate comments in the margins, put question marks, check marks and other private notations next to paragraphs that only I—and sometimes not even I—can later decipher. I would love to see an anthology of comments and underlined passages by readers of history books in public libraries, who despite the strict prohibition of such activity could not help themselves and had to register their complaints about the author of the book or the direction in which humanity has been heading for the last few thousand years.”
– Charles Simic, quoted in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, by Alan Jacobs
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I love defacing my books.
They are branded as mine.
If we take notes when we read, we are already translating the ideas of others into our own.
We underline where we wish to cut.
We can be brazen, because these heists are done in the privacy of our own books.
I hate not having a pencil to hand when I read.
There is a force that acts so strong when I read a sentence that needs to be preserved for my collection.
I must underline, scribble in the margin, drop breadcrumbs to help me find my way back to it.
I hate not to be able to do this.
It’s not real reading if there isn’t the opportunity to take notes.
It’s like a one-way conversation: the book talks at me. I might aswell not be there.
But with a pencil, I get a word in edgeways.
Then the book talks to me. I am the only intended audience.
Our conversation is preserved forever.
I can share the highlights with others.
My archive of conversations with quotations.
Conversations With Quotations 