History, as they say, is alive and well and living in London. Helene Hanff More Quotes by Helene Hanff More Quotes From Helene Hanff Standing there, staring at the long shelves crammed with books, I felt myself relax and was suddenly at peace. Helene Hanff relax long book If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much. Helene Hanff kissing crosses happens 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. Helene Hanff reading attention long 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? Helene Hanff nerves age years 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. Helene Hanff eye simple two 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. Helene Hanff moments heart book I wanted to see London the way old people want to see home before they die. Helene Hanff want home people 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. Helene Hanff reading memories book Talent is the infinite capacity for taking pains. Genius is the infinite capacity for achievement without taking any pains at all. Helene Hanff achievement pain genius 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. Helene Hanff despair home book 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. Helene Hanff pages hate book Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books? Helene Hanff dream book thinking 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 principles dresses book Hollywood isn't a place, it's a way of life. Helene Hanff hollywood way 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. Helene Hanff grease reading use 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. Helene Hanff sprinkles leaving book I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. Helene Hanff owners pages book 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 enough Early Anglo-Saxon words for is ‘How to Slaughter a Thousand Men in a Mead Hall’. Helene Hanff guilt writing men 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. Helene Hanff knives mother people 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. Helene Hanff ghost looks fall
