Award Acceptance Quotes & Sayings

Few have greater riches than the joy That comes to us in visions, In dreams which nobody can take away. — Euripides

Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.
(Acceptance speech, National Book Award 2010 (Nonfiction), November 17, 2010) — Patti Smith

Mother, you can still hold hold on but forgive, forgive and give for long as long as we both shall live, I forgive you, Mother. — Barbara Kingsolver

A nap is not to be confused with sleeping. We sleep to recharge our bodies. We nap to care for our souls. When we nap, we are resting our eyes while our imaginations soar. Getting ready for the next round. Sorting, sifting, separating the profound from the profane, the possible from the improbable. Rehearsing our acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, our surprise on receiving the MacArthur genius award. This requires a prone position. If we're lucky, we might drift off, but we won't drift far. Just far enough to ransom our creativity from chaos. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

The man that I named the Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing. It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom. Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things.
[from her Newberry Award acceptance speech] — Lois Lowry

You may be big in New York, but in Walters, Oklahoma, you're nobody. — Abe Lemons

They say I live a fast life. Maybe I just like a fast life. I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world. It won't last forever, either. But the memories will. — Dennis Wilson

So, what happened next will have to go down in my book of Bad Decisions, planted firmly in the chapter entitled, I have no idea what I was thinking — Paul Feig

There are treasures everywhere ... it's a treasure if you love it. It doesn't matter how much it costs, or whether anyone else wants it. If you love it, you will treasure it. — Alexis M. Smith

I'm full of restlessness. Not lonely, exactly - my head is racing with ideas. But it is that old treacherous feeling that real life is happening somewhere else, and I'm left out. — Helen Garner