What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can’t reread a phone call.

Carpenter contrasts the permanence of letters with the ephemerality of spoken conversation. Letters preserve voice, nuance, and the evolution of relationships; they can be revisited, quoted, and used to reconstruct memory. A phone call, by contrast, vanishes as soon as it ends, leaving only imperfect recollection. The remark also gestures toward a cultural shift: as communication becomes faster and more convenient, it can become less archival and less reflective. Implicitly, the quote mourns not only a medium but a habit of thought—writing as a slower, more deliberate form of self-expression that creates a tangible record of intimacy and history.