“I shall sprinkle pale pencil marks through it pointing out the best passages to some booklover yet unborn.” LettersNonfictionHelene HanffAnnotating Book:84, Charing Cross Road Source: 84, Charing Cross Road
“Mis amigos son muy peculiares en cuestión de libros. Leen todos los best sellers que caen en sus manos, devorándolos lo más rápidamente posible…, y saltándose montones de párrafos según creo. Pero luego JAMAS releen nada, con lo que al cabo de un año no recuerdan ni una palabra de lo que leyeron.” LettersEpistolary Book:84, Charing Cross Road Source: 84, Charing Cross Road
“Según entienden ellos la cosa, compras un libro, lo lees, lo colocas en la estantería y jamás vuelves a abrirlo en toda tu vida, ¡PERO NUNCA LO TIRAS! ¡JAMÁS DE LOS JAMASES SI ESTÁ ENCUADERNADO EN TAPA DURA! Pero… ¿por qué no? Personalmente creo que no hay nada menos sacrosanto que un mal libro e incluso un libro mediocre.” LettersEpistolary Book:84, Charing Cross Road Source: 84, Charing Cross Road
“¿Por qué será que personas a las que jamás se les pasaría por la imaginación robar nada encuentran perfectamente lícito robar libros?” LettersEpistolary Book:84, Charing Cross Road Source: 84, Charing Cross Road
“Londres, por las cartas que escribí, ¡han colocado, en el emplazamiento de la librería, una placa de cobre con mi nombre! Sigo pensando que soy un escritora sin cultura ni demasiado talento, pero a pesar de todo ¡me han dedicado una placa en un muro de Londres.” LettersEpistolary Book:84, Charing Cross Road Source: 84, Charing Cross Road
“If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.” PleaseEnglandBritishDebtKissWriters Book:84, Charing Cross Road Source: 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.” BooksBook Lover Book:84, Charing Cross Road Source: 84, Charing Cross Road
“Standing there, staring at the long shelves crammed with books, I felt myself relax and was suddenly at peace.” BooksLibraryBookstore Book:Q's Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books Source: Q's Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books
“A newspaper man I know, who was stationed in London during the war, says tourists go to England with preconceived notions, so they always find exactly what they go looking for. I told him I’d go looking for the England of English literature, and he said: “Then it’s there.” Books Book:84, Charing Cross Road Source: 84, Charing Cross Road
“That's for me. I am a great lover of 'I was there' books.” ReadingBooks Book:84, Charing Cross Road Source: 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?” Murder MysteryBooksellersRare Books Book:84, Charing Cross Road Source: 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.” Peanut Butter Author:Helene Hanff
“From the opposite shore my eight year-old self never dreamed she'd see the blue Atlantic was the same.” EnglandUsaTransatlanticHelene HanffQ S Legacy Book:Q's Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books Source: Q's Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books
“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 how was I to know the miracle waiting to happen round the corner in late middle age? 84, Charing Cross Road was no best seller, you understand; it didn’t make me rich or famous. It just got me hundreds of letters and phone calls from people I never knew existed; it got me wonderful reviews; it restored a self-confidence and self-esteem I’d lost somewhere along the way, God knows how many years ago. It brought me to England. It changed my life.” DreamSuccess Book:The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street Source: The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street
“All my life I've wanted to see London. [...] I wanted to see London the way old people want to see home before they die.” EnglandLondonAnglophile Book:The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street Source: The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street
“I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for.” EnglandAnglophile Book:84, Charing Cross Road Source: 84, Charing Cross Road
“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 HanffQ S Legacy Book:Q's Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books Source: Q's Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books
“If I live to be very old, all my memories of the glory days will grow vague and confused, till I won't be certain any of it really happened. But the books will be there, on my shelves and in my head - the one enduring reality I can be certain of till the day I die. Of all the gifts in Q's legacy, the first still mattered most and would matter longest. If it took me a lifetime to learn that, Q won't mind. He knows I was never a very bright pupil.” Helene HanffQ S Legacy Author:Helene Hanff