Helene Hanff Quotes

“I shall sprinkle pale pencil marks through it pointing out the best passages to some booklover yet unborn.”
― Helene Hanff, 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 Hanff, Q's Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books

“From the opposite shore my eight year-old self never dreamed she'd see the blue Atlantic was the same.”
― Helene Hanff, 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 Hanff