Talent is the infinite capacity for taking pains. Genius is the infinite capacity for achievement without taking any pains at all. — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
“I tell you, life is extraordinary. A few years ago I couldn’t write anything or sell anything, I’d passed the age where you know all the returns are in, I’d had my chance and done my best and failed. And… — 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… — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon / Middle English by a friend… — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
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… — Helene Hanff Copy Share Image
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
