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’.
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… - Helene Hanff
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…
- Helene Hanff
I wanted to see London the way old people want to see home before they die. - Helene Hanff
I wanted to see London the way old people want to see home before they die.
I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone … - Helene Hanff
I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone …
If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much. - Helene Hanff
If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.
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 rea… - Helene Hanff
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 rea…
I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. - Helene Hanff
I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest.
Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books? - Helene Hanff
Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books?
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 ghos… - Helene Hanff
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 ghos…
I never overcame my conviction that writing for commercial television was a kind of prostitution. - Helene Hanff
I never overcame my conviction that writing for commercial television was a kind of prostitution.
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