Books Quote by Helene Hanff

“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

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

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

— Helene Hanff

“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

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

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

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

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

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

— Helene Hanff

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

“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

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