Helene Hanff

Helene Hanff (April 15, 1916 – April 9, 1997) was an American writer, known for her book 84, Charing Cross Road. The book consists of letters spanning 20 years of correspondence between Helen Hanff in Manhattan and a book shop in London.

Quotes

• FPD! CRISIS!
      I sent that package off. The chief item in it was a 6-pound ham. I figured you could take it to a butcher and get it sliced up so everybody would have some to take home.
      But I just noticed on your last invoice it says: "B. Marks, M. Cohen." Props.
      ARE THEY KOSHER? I could rush a tongue over.
              ADVISE PLEASE!
  • 84, Charing Cross Road. Penguin Books. 1990. p. 8.  (1st edition 1970; FPD is the book shop employee Frank Percy Doel. The letter is dated December 9, 1949 (during rationing in the UK).

• Q (Quiller-Couch) was all by himself my college education.
  • The Duchess of Bloomsbury. Lippincott. 1973. p. 51. 

• ... I was haunted by the fact that I didn't have an education and that I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write plays but I didn't seem to realize there was something wrong with not liking to read plays.
  • 1981 interview of Helene Hanff by Roy Plomley. Desert Island Discs, BBC (bbc.co.uk). quote at 3:54 of 32:37 in audio recording

• ... the surest sign that a new year is beginning is that everybody is on a self-improvement-drive. From New York University at 8th Street, to Hunter College at 68th, half of New York is registering at some college for night courses in Philosophy or the History of Art which most of them will drop out of on the first sleeting winter night. And I, who hate novels, have begun lugging Joyce Carol Oates and V. S. Naipaul and Doris Lessing home from the library, in an attempt to Improve my Mind.
  • Letter from New York. New York: Moyer Bell. 1992. p. 54.  1st part of quote 2nd part of quote