“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, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“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, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: "It's there.”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books?”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“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, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“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, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“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, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“i am going to bed. i will have nightmares involving huge monsters in academic robes carrying long bloody butcher knives labeled Excerpt, Selection, Passage, and Abridged.”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“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.)”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“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, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“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, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“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, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: 'It's there.'
Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. Looking around the rug one thing's for sure: it's here.”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“Have you got De Tocqueville's Journey to America? Somebody borrowed mine and never gave it back. Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books?”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“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, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“I houseclean my books every spring and throw out those I’m never going to read again likeI throw out clothes I’m never going to wear again. It shocks everybody. My friends are peculiar about books. They read all the best sellers, they get through them as fast as possible,I think they skip a lot. And they NEVER read anything a second time so they don’t remember a word of it a year later. But they are profoundly shocked to see me drop a book in the wastebasket or give it away. The way they look at it, you buy a book, you read it, you put it on the shelf, you never open it again for the rest of your life but YOU DON’T THROW IT OUT! NOT IF IT HAS A HARD COVER ON IT! Why not?I personally can’t think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“i enclose two limp singles, i will make do with this thing till you find me a real Pepys. THEN i will rip up this ersatz book, page be page, AND WRAP THINGS IN IT.”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“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 to wear again.”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“Buying a book you've never read is like buying a dress you've never tried on”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for.”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“I shall be obliged if you will send Nora and the girls to church every Sunday for the next month to pray for the continued health and strength of the messrs. gilliam, reese, snider, campanella, robinson, hodges, furillo, podres, necombe and labine, collectively known as the The Brooklyn Dodgers. If they lose this World Series I shall Do Myself In and then where will you be?”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“All my scripts have artistic backgrounds -- ballet, concert hall, opera -- and all the suspects and corpses are cultured, maybe I'll do one about the rare book business in your honor, do you want to be the murderer or the corpse?”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“Soy una apasionada de los libros escritos por testigos oculares.”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“I fail to see why you did not understand that groceryman, he did not call it 'ground ground nuts,' he called it ground ground-nuts which is the only really SENSible thing to call it. Peanuts grow in the GROUND and are therefore GROUND-nuts, and after you take them out of the ground you grind them up and you have ground ground-nuts, which is a much more accurate name than peanut butter, you just don't understand English.”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“i go through life watching the english language being raped before me face, like miniver cheevy, i was born too late.
and like miniver cheevy i cough and call it fate and go on drinking.”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
Helene Hanff
Born place: in Philadelphia, The United States
Born date April 15, 1916
See more on GoodReads
“Penelope gulped down the tea she'd been in the process of sipping. Colin had a way of looking at a person, his green eyes so focused and intent that you felt as if you must be the only two people in the universe. Unfortunately for Penelope, it also seemed to have a way of reducing her to a stammering imbecile. If they were in the midst of a conversation, she could generally hold her own, but when he surprised her like that, turning his attention onto her just when she'd convinced herself she blended in perfectly with the wallpaper, she was completely and utterly lost.”
― Julia Quinn, quote from Romancing Mister Bridgerton
“His frustration with some Americans was like that of a disappointed parent. He was so content in this country, so impressed with and loving of its opportunities, but then why, sometimes, did Americans fall short of their best selves?”
― Dave Eggers, quote from Zeitoun
“The immappable world of our journey. A pass in the mountains. A bloodstained stone. The marks of steel upon it. Names carved in the corrosible lime among stone fishes and ancient shells. Things dimmed and dimming. The dry sea floor. The tools of migrant hunters. The dreams encased upon the blades of them. The peregrine bones of a prophet. The silence. The gradual extinction of rain. The coming of night.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from Cities of the Plain
“Bigots see something they expect and then they stop thinking about what is in front of them. It's probably how they got to be bigots in the first place.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from White Night
“If you ever get in a situation where you need to shoot somebody, point the gun and keep pulling the trigger until it stops shooting. Forget about rules or excessive violence or any of that. Just keep pulling.”
― John Sandford, quote from Rules of Prey
The Dead of Night
Sometimes Never
Babe in Boyland
Shadowhunters and Do...
Games People Play
HollywoodBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
