When I come across something I really like in a book, I put a dot in the margin. Not a check, not a double line—these would be pedantic—but a single nearly invisible tap or nudge of the pen tip…

I can reread a book that I have dotted here and there, and yet not be too distracted by the record of my earlier discoveries.

Then—and this is the most important part—at some later date, sometimes years later, I refer to the page numbers, locate the dots, and copy out the passages that have awaited my return into a spiral-bound notebook.

There is good to be gained in signing someone else’s mind-signature, in scribbling in tongues: the retracing of a series of long-lost authorial motions with your own present pen, if you do it in the proper spirit, out of a desire to stay delight’s presence rather than out of autodidactic obligation…