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Helene Hanff Biography

Helene Hanff (April 15, 1916 – April 9, 1997) was an American writer born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is best known as the author of the book 84, Charing Cross Road, which became the basis for a stage play, television play, and film of the same name.

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Helene Hanff Quotes

I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to "I hate to read new books," and I hollered "Comrade!" to whoever owned it before me.

Book, Came, Hate, Oftenest, Page, Pages

I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.

Attention, Long, Margins, Reading, Turning

I'll have mine [The Book-Lovers' Anthology] till the day I die - and die happy in the knowledge that I'm leaving it behind for someone else to love. I shall sprinkle pale pencil marks through it pointing out the best passages to some book-lover yet unborn.

Book, Knowledge, Leaving, Sprinkle, Sprinkles, Till

Standing there, staring at the long shelves crammed with books, I felt myself relax and was suddenly at peace.

Book, Books, Long, Peace, Relax, Standing

I liked reading about the nun who ate so dainty with her fingers she never dripped any grease on herself. I've never been able to make that claim and I use a fork.

Dripped, Grease, Make, Reading, Use

My problem is that while other people are reading fifty books I'm reading one book fifty times. I only stop when at the bottom of page 20, say, I realize I can recite pages 21 and 22 from memory. Then I put the book away for a few years.

Book, Books, Memories, Reading, Say, Stop

Talent is the infinite capacity for taking pains. Genius is the infinite capacity for achievement without taking any pains at all.

Achievement, Genius, Pain, Pains, Talent

I find the treatment of royalty distinctly peculiar. The royal family lives in palaces heavily screened from prying eyes by fences, grounds, gates, guards, all designed to ensure the family absolute privacy. And every newspaper in London carried headlines announcing PRINCESS ANNE HAS OVARIAN CYST REMOVED. I mean you're a young girl reared in heavily guarded seclusion and every beer drinker in every pub knows the precise state of your ovaries.

Drinker, Girl, Mean, Princess, Screened

Did I tell you I finally found the perfect page-cutter? It's a pearl-handled fruit knife. My mother left me a dozen of them, I keep one in the pencil cup on my desk. Maybe I go with the wrong kind of people but i'm just not likely to have twelve guests all sitting around simultaneously eating fruit.

Knives, Left, Mother, People, Simultaneously, Sitting

I despair of ever getting it through anybody's head I am not interested in bookshops, I am interested in what's written in the books. I don't browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.

Book, Books, Bookshop, Despair, Home, Written

What fortune teller would ever have had the nerve to predict that the best years of my life would turn out to be my old age?

Age, Life, Nerves, Old, Years

I wish you hadn't been so over-courteous about putting the inscription on a card instead of on the flyleaf. It's the bookseller coming out in you all, you were afraid you'd decrease its value. You would have increased it for the present owner. (And possibly for the future owner. I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to. )

Comradely, Future, Long, Putting, Reading, Wish

It's against my principles to buy a book I haven't read, it's like buying a dress you haven't tried on.

Book, Principles, Dresses, Buy, Buying

Fact One: Cataract surgery is simple, painless and (except with implants) risk free. . . the whole procedure is common, routine and nothing to worry about. Fact Two: Fact One applies only to cataracts on the eyes in somebody else's head.

Cataract, Eye, Implants, Procedure, Simple, Two

I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest.

Book, Owner, Owners, Pages, Previous, Read

I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.

Book, Thinking, Mediocre, Think, Bad

And for at least that moment, I wouldn't have traded the hundreds of books I've read for the few I know almost by heart.

Book, Books, Heart, Hundreds, Know, Moments

It looks too new and pristine ever to have been read by anyone else, but it has been: it keeps falling open at the most delightful places as the ghost of its former owner points me to things I've never read before.

Fall, Ghost, Looks, Open, Pristine