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 long gone has called my attention to.

Buying a book you've never read is like buying a dress you've never tried on.

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.

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.