Quotes from book
84, Charing Cross Road

84, Charing Cross Road
Helene Hanff

84, Charing Cross Road is a 1970 book by Helene Hanff, later made into a stage play, television play, and film, about the twenty-year correspondence between the author and Frank Doel, chief buyer of Marks & Co antiquarian booksellers, located at the eponymous address in London, England.

“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 book 84, Charing Cross Road

Source: 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 book 84, Charing Cross Road

Source: 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 book 84, Charing Cross Road

Source: 84, Charing Cross Road

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

Helene Hanff book 84, Charing Cross Road

Source: 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 book 84, Charing Cross Road

Source: 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 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.”

Helene Hanff book 84, Charing Cross Road

Source: 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 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.”

Helene Hanff book 84, Charing Cross Road

Source: 84, Charing Cross Road

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