The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger (tutor to Nero) complained that his peers were wasting time and money accumulating too many books, admonishing that "the abundance of books is a distraction." Instead, Seneca recommended focusing on a limited number of good books, to be read thoroughly and repeatedly.
Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?
Whatever sentence will bear to be read twice, we may be sure was thought twice.
I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.
Some writers you return to again and again, and for me, Nancy Mitford is one of them.
If you find that the reader of popular romances--however uneducated a reader, however bad the romances--goes back to his old favourites again and again, then you have pretty good evidence that they are to him a sort of poetry.
Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it.
Reading should be a repeat performance.
One of the problems you have when you read with kids is that once they like something they want you to read it a hundred times.
'The Hobbit' by J. R. R. Tolkien was the first book I enjoyed. I was 14 and when I finished I started it again.
Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.
My favorite reader is one that revisits books and gets something new out of them each time.
There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over.
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.
Of every movie that I've seen multiple times, of every TV show that I was obsessed with, I don't think I was ever obsessed with anything more than 'Flowers in the Attic,' which I read 13 times between fourth grade and senior year.
If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all.
'The Great Gatsby' is a book I have read a few times, and it seems to get heavier every time I come to visit.
Most of my reading is rereading.
Dorothy B. Hughes - there's a robust elegance to her writing that I keep responding to again and again. I've read her novel 'In a Lonely Place' about eight or nine times.
It's embarrassing to admit how many times I've reread the following: 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,' '1984,' 'Lord of the Flies,' 'The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,' 'Germinal,' 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle,' and 'A Moveable Feast.'
I've reread 'The Secret Garden' every year as an adult. I have a battered copy on my bookshelf - it's really quite a mess! The experience of reading the novel keeps deepening for me.
I know not a better rule of reading the Scripture, than to read it through from beginning to end and when we have finished it once, to begin it again. We shall meet with many passages which we can make little improvement of, but not so many in the second reading as in the first, and fewer in the third than in the second: provided we pray to him who has the keys to open our understandings, and to anoint our eyes with His spiritual ointment.
The test of real literature is that it will bear repetition. We read over the same pages again and again, and always with fresh delight.
You can never step into the same book twice, because you are different each time you read it.
