The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street Quotes

“I despair of ever getting it through anybody's head I am not interested in bookshops, I am interested in what's written in the books. 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, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“History, as they say, is alive and well and living in London.”
― Helene Hanff, 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.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“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 realise I can recite pages 21 and 22 from memory. Then I put the book away for a few years.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“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.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“And for at least that moment, I wouldn't have traded the hundreds of books I've read for the few I know almost by heart.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“I find the treatment of royalty distinctly peculiar. The royal family lives in palaces heavily screened from prying eyes by fences, grounds, gates, guards, all designed to ensure the family absolute privacy. And every newspaper in London carried headlines announcing PRINCESS ANNE HAS OVARIAN CYST REMOVED. I mean you're a young girl reared in heavily guarded seclusion and every beer drinker in every pub knows the precise state of your ovaries.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“Somewhere along the way I came upon a mews with a small sign on the entrance gate addressed to the passing world. The sign orders flatly:

COMMIT NO NUISANCE

The more you stare at that, the more territory it covers. From dirtying the streets to housebreaking to invading Viet Nam, that covers all the territory there is.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“purely hated myself because I hadn’t bothered to ask his name. People oughtn’t to breeze into your life and out again in ten seconds, without leaving even a name behind. As Mr. Dickens once pointed out, we’re all on our way to the grave together.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“[Re America & Britain] we are two countries divided by a common language”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“One of these days I’m going to write a book about living in New York—in a sixteen-story apartment house complete with families, bachelors, career girls, a ninety-year-old Village Idiot and a doorman who can tell you the name and apartment number of every one of the twenty-seven resident dogs. I am so tired of being told what a terrible place New York is to live in by people who don’t live there.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“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.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“Charing Cross Road is a narrow, honky-tonk street, choked with traffic, lined with second-hand bookshops. The open stalls in front were piled with old books and magazines, here and there a peaceful soul was browsing in the misty rain.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“I sit here on the plane trying to see faces, trying to hold onto London, but the mind intrudes with thoughts of home: the mail piled up waiting for me, the people waiting, the world waiting.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“Every time I eat strawberries here I think of the English clergyman who remarked: 'Doubtless God could have made a better berry than the strawberry and doubtless God never did.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“The things I agree to with a little gin in me.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“In London you shoo them away by talking to them. In New York talking to them would just get you their life stories”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“And because I didn’t have the moral backbone to say, “I don’t know,” I explained the whole thing to her—off the top of my head.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“I went down to Chemical—and after asking to see everything but my teeth, they cashed {my cheque}. Nothing infuriates me like those friendly, folksy bank ads in magazines and on TV. Every bank I ever walked into was about as folksy as a cobra.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“You decide to stop using the word “anachronism” when a seventeenth-century carriage drives through the gates of Buckingham Palace carrying twentieth-century Russian or African diplomats to be welcomed by a queen. “Anachronism” implies something long dead, and nothing is dead here. History, as they say, is alive and well and living in London.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“My problem was that by this time the Colonel and I had already had thirty straight hours of Togetherness and I’m not equipped for it, not even with the best friend I have on earth, which he isn’t.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“This is Great Tew. You can’t find it on the map, you have to get lost on the way to Oxford.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“Tell me,” said Leo. “You’ve written a beautiful book. Why haven’t we heard from you before? What was wrong with your earlier work? Too good or not good enough.” “Not good enough,” I said. And he nodded and went on to something else, and I think that’s when we became soul mates.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“BUCKINGHAM PALACE.
Vacancy in the central wash-up of the main kitchen, for female applicants only. Non-residential. . . .

Apply in writing to:
Master of the Household, Buckingham Palace, London SW 1

Wouldn’t you like to take that job for one day, just to listen to the gossip?”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“I seem to be living in a state of deep hypnosis, every time I mail a postcard home I could use Euphoria for a return address.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“I tell you it’s insidious being an ersatz Duchess, people rushing to give you what you want before you’ve had time to want it. If I kept this up for more than a month it would ruin my moral fiber.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“Lying in peaceful St. James’s, I realize how much a city’s parks reflect the character of its people. The parks here are tranquil, quiet, a bit reserved, and I love them. But on a long-term basis, I would sorely miss the noisy exuberance of Central Park.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“Carmen, dear,” I said, “I am not the kind of author who wants to be protected from her public. Any fan who phones might want to feed me, and I am totally available as a dinner guest. Just give out my address all over.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“After supper we climbed into his car. He didn’t ask what I wanted to see, he just drove me to the corner where the Globe Theatre stood. Nothing is there now, the lot is empty. I made him stop the car and I got out and stood on that empty lot and I thought the top of my head would come off.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

“We chose which houses we’ll buy if we’re born rich next time.”
― Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street