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… — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
“Somewhere along the way I came upon a mews with a small sign on the entrance gate addressed to the passing world. The sign… — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
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… — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
“I houseclean my books every spring and throw out those I'm never going to read again like I throw out clothes I'm never going… — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
It's against my principles to buy a book I haven't read, it's like buying a dress you haven't tried on. — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone… — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
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… — Helene Hanff Copy Share
I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon / Middle English by a friend who had to take it for her Ph.D. They told her to write an essay in Early Anglo-Saxon on any-subject-of-her-own-choosing. “Which is all very well,” she said bitterly, “but the only essay subject you can find… — Helene Hanff Copy Share
I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book. — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
What fortune teller would ever have had the nerve to predict that the best years of my life would turn out to be my… — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
“Please write and tell me about London, I live for the day when I step off the boat-train and feel its dirty sidewalks under my feet. I want to walk up Berkeley Square and down Wimpole Street and stand in St.Paul's where John Donne preached and sit on the step Elizabeth sat on when she refused to enter the Tower,… — Helene Hanff Copy Share
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.… — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
