F U Penguin Book Quotes & Sayings

The poems were the only thing I wrote that was not for everyone else. Then my editors at Penguin, who were also friends and had seen several of them, aggressively urged me to do a book. Editors can be aggressive, especially after drinks. That's how 'Beyond This Dark House' appeared. — Guy Gavriel Kay

The surprising thing is that so many teenage cancer novels are very good. John Green's 'The Fault in Our Stars,' recently published by Penguin, was voted 'Time Magazine's book of the year in 2012 ahead of Hilary Mantel and Zadie Smith. — Mal Peet

When I was a kid, I just read and read. We were lucky enough to have gone to England and had a whole bunch of Penguin Puffins books, like The Land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley, which is hilarious. I would love to be able to write a book like that, but I don't know that I have a humorous bone in my body when it comes to writing. Once on a Time by A.A. Milne. I read a lot of old, old fantasy stuff. The Carbonelbooks by Barbara Sleigh. Then when I got a little older I loved Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I was a big fan of romance and when I got a little bit older I would read a Harlequin romance or a Georgette Heyer novel and then David Copperfield, and then another genre book and then Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy. I was that kind of reader. One book that I loved was I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I loved voice and that book had it in spades. And then of course I grew into loving Jane Eyre. — Franny Billingsley

A central principle underlying Mrs Quinty's Rules for Writing is that you have to have a Beginning Middle and End. If you don't have these your Reader is lost. But what if Lost is exactly where the writer is? I asked her. Ruth, the writer can't be lost, she said, and then knew she'd said it too quickly and bit her lip knowing I was going to say something about Dad. She pressed her knees together and diverted into a fit of dry coughing. This, Dear Reader, is a river narrative. My chosen style is The Meander. I know that in The Brothers Karamazov (Book 1,777, Penguin Classics, London) Ippolit Kirillovich chose the historical form of narration because Dostoevsky says it checked his own exuberant rhetoric. Beginnings middles and ends force you into that place where you have to Stick to the Story as Maeve Mulvey said the night the Junior Certs were supposed to be going to the cinema in Ennis but were buying cans in Dunnes and drinking — Niall Williams

[Lord Horror] was so unique and radical, I expected to go to prison for it. I always thought that if you wrote a truly dangerous book -- something dangerous would happen to you. Which is one reason there are so few really dangerous books around. Publishers play at promoting dangerous books, whether they're Serpent's Tail or Penguin. All you get is a book vetted by committee, never anything radically imaginative or offensive that will take your fucking head off. Ironically, I think it would do other authors a power of good if they had to account for their books by going to prison -- there are far too many bad books being published! — David Britton

A deep voice said by her ear, "You look like shit." Pia almost leaped out of her skin. Then she pressed the heel of her hands against her eyelids until she saw stars before turning to face Quentin.
"That's my boss," she said over her shoulder to Preston. "A compliment a minute."
Harrison, Thea (2011-05-03). Dragon Bound (A Novel of the Elder Races Book 1) (p. 28). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition. — Thea Harrison

It was the yearning she related to. Shriver seemed to understand the specific human pain of wanting and pushing away at the same time. It left her with a gorgeous ache, and when she turned the last page of the book and closed the cover, Norah's connection to the writer felt absolute. It was a breathless, consuming rapture.... — Ellen Meister

By the end of that summer in Ashcroft my father had nearly run out of stories. He'd almost read his father's full library and arrived at last at Moby Dick. The edition I have is a Penguin paperback (Book 2,333, Herman Melville, Penguin, London). It's been well-thumbed, at least triple-read, there's that smell the fat orange-spine Penguins get when their pages have yellowed and the book bulges, basically the smell of complex humanity, sort of sweat and salt and endeavour. Like all the fat orange Penguins, it gets fatter with reading, which it should, because in a way the more you read it the bigger your own experience of the world gets, the fatter your soul. Try it, you'll see. — Niall Williams

Everyone looks at me like I'm stark naked standing on a glacier petting a penguin. — Brandy Nacole

Goodness provokes bitchiness. It's mathematical. It's somewhere in the human genes. Any number of lovely poeple are married to horrible ones. Read Middlemarch (Book 989, George Eliot, Penguin Classics, London) if you don't believe me. There's something in me that just can't let it be. Goodness is a tidy bow you just can't help wanting to pull loose. — Niall Williams

The Penguin books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid that if other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and suppress them. — George Orwell

I tutted. "That's cold, Nate."
"Hey - " He pointed his finger at me.
"I'm not a complete shit. I realized later that night that it was a stupid bloody idea and I felt awful."
"Felt awful?" Nathan harrumphed.
"You cried your eyes out." I pinched my lips together to keep from laughing. Nate scowled.
"Manly tears. Manly tears of regret."
Young, Samantha (2014-01-07). Before Jamaica Lane (On Dublin Street Book 3) (Kindle Locations 2913-2916). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. — Samantha Young

They peer in and at the same moment both angle back their heads, as if they have taken a position a little too close to a panoramic screen. They are tall and big-boned and look like men playing women's parts in a play by Oscar Wilde. 'Nan, Verge's sisters are here,' my mother says loudly. But Nan already knows, and furiously pokers the fire to try and smoke them back out. Nan here is The Aged P only with more mischievousness than Mr Wemmick's in Great Expectations, the only book of which my father kept two copies (Books 180 and 400, Penguin Classic & Everyman Classics editions, London), both of which I have read twice, deciding each time that Great Expectations is the Greatest. If you don't agree, stop here, go back and read it again. I'll wait. Or be dead. — Niall Williams