Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Helene Hanff
Age: 80 †
Born: 1916
Born: April 15
Died: 1997
Died: April 9
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Ever
Former
Looks
Keeps
Pristine
Things
Places
Owner
Never
Open
Delightful
Anyone
Owners
Read
Points
Fall
Ghost
Else
Falling

More quotes by Helene Hanff

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 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
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 old age?
Helene Hanff
Image
I never overcame my conviction that writing for commercial television was a kind of prostitution.
Helene Hanff
Image
Hollywood isn't a place, it's a way of life.
Helene Hanff
Image
I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.
Helene Hanff
Image
Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books?
Helene Hanff
Image
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
Image
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
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 long gone has called my attention to.
Helene Hanff
Image
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
Image
I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest.
Helene Hanff
Image
Talent is the infinite capacity for taking pains. Genius is the infinite capacity for achievement without taking any pains at all.
Helene Hanff