Book Awards Quotes & Sayings

If I'm extremely bored and I don't have a book with me and I'm being an obnoxious teenager, I'll read 'BuzzFeed' on my phone. But even that just leaves me feeling icky because I think for some reason my comfort zone is to just not really be in the loop about stuff like awards shows or things like that. — Tavi Gevinson

The meetings and marches and vigils are cool, but if the enemy isn't present, you're just talking slick to a can of oil. — Darnell Lamont Walker

Stay alert! Don't let someone's words blind you from their behavior ...
They can say all the right things, they can make you feel things you've never felt before, but don't be fooled; their actions will reveal their true character, desires, and priorities.
Behavior speaks; pay attention to what it tells you. Behavior is math; pay attention to what it reveals. — Steve Maraboli

You can be a member of all of the romance writers associations, take part in all of the networking available, or win the latest romance award ... but guess what? None of that makes a difference if you don't WRITE something people want to READ. The greatest editor in the world won't make your book a best seller if it isn't something people care about. So forget all of the fluff that clouds your purpose ... writing!! — Kathryn Le Veque

If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things. — Daniel Dennett

In the end, art is small beer. The really serious things are earning one's living so as not to be a parasite and loving one's neighbor. — W. H. Auden

When I look at Perfidia, I think, "That's a Pulitzer Prize winner. That's a National Book Award winner." It's not going to get it. It's going to be shelved in crime and it's just the way it is. I've done something that no one else has ever done; I've started out as a mystery writer, a police writer, and a crime writer, and I became something entirely different. — James Ellroy

The fact remains that books that really put gay people in the center, and especially books that do so in a way that is sexually explicit, tend not to get a great deal of mainstream attention: they don't tend to sell well, and they don't tend to win major awards. This makes the occasional exception, like Alan Hollinghurst, all the more remarkable. — Garth Greenwell

Leanne lighted an oil lamp and they continued until the moment came to receive the baby. 'Erzulie, mother loa, help it be born,' Tete prayed aloud. 'Saint Raymond Nonatus, pay attention, do not let an African saint get ahead of you,' Leanne answered in the same tone, and they both burst out laughing. — Isabel Allende

The book trade invented literary prizes to stimulate sales, not to reward merit. — Michael Moorcock

However, unlike some of my friends and students, I don't think it's a laughing matter. I think it is frightening to see what outrageous stories can be told in the United States and then are accepted by many educated people and academics as facts. Movies get awards, books become best sellers, heroes are made, and people become wealthy as a result of dishonest caricatures of Iranian people and society. — Mohammad Marandi

I think hard times are coming. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality. — Ursula K. Le Guin

On the other hand, winning awards is cool. Aside from the warm fuzzy, it creates publicity, and that helps spread the word about the book.
Plus, this award was a plaque of some sort. I could have used that for all sorts of things. Obviously it would be useful for decorating the barren walls of my house and intimidating my enemies, but that's just for starters. — Patrick Rothfuss

But I hope that in the lives of Ender Wiggin, Novinha, Miro, Ela, Human, Jane, the hive queen, and so many others in this book, you will find stories worth holding in your memory, perhaps even in your heart. That's the transaction that counts more than bestseller lists, royalty statements, awards, or reviews. Because in the pages of this book, you and I will meet one-on-one, my mind and yours, and you will enter a world of my making and dwell there, not as a character that I control, but as a person with a mind of your own. You will make of my story what you need it to be, if you can. I hope my tale is true enough and flexible enough that you can make it into a world worth living in. — Orson Scott Card

Would it surprise you to know that a presence was on your back a few seconds ago? — Teresa Flavin

What I eventually realized is that the real business of books is not done by awards committees or people who turn trees into paper or editors or agents or even writers. We're all just facilitators. The real business is done by readers. — John Green

Funny, how the things you have the hardest time parting with are the things you need the least. — Bob Dylan

We need writers who know the difference between the production of a commodity and the practice of an art. — Ursula K. Le Guin

They say that children have the purest hearts. That children don't truly hate, because they don't fully understand the emotion. They forgive and forget easily. — Abbi Glines

No matter how many awards you've won or how many sales you've got, come the next book it's still a blank sheet of paper and you're still panicking like hell that you've got nothing new to say. — Ian Rankin

Look, if you draw a two thousand-mile-long line across the United States at any angle, it's going to pass through nine murder victims. — Bill Bryson

This medal (the National Book Award) together with my American Express card, will identify me worldwide ... except at Bloomingdale's. — S.J Perelman

Who do readers expect to see when they pick up this book? Who has won the Most Troubled Romantic Lead at the BookWorld Awards seventy-seven times in a row? Me. All me. — Jasper Fforde

An award does not change the quality of a book. — Chris Van Allsburg

I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction. — Joyce Carol Oates

I met Heinlein after 'The Forever War' had won the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He shook my hand and said he loved the book so much, he'd read it three times. — Joe Haldeman

My grandad always said, "You should never judge a book by its cover." And it's for that reason that he lost his job as chair of the British Book Cover Awards panel. — Stewart Lee

Ward: Which would you rather have, a National Book Award or a Hugo?
Le Guin: Oh, a Nobel, of course.
Ward: They don't give Nobel Awards in fantasy.
Le Guin: Maybe I can do something for peace. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Adrienne Rich was one of the most widely-read and influential poets of her time, a leading feminist, known especially for her politically-engaged verse. Her best-known volume, "Diving into the Wreck," won the National Book Award in 1973. — Earl Scruggs

It's better to be nominated for awards than not to be nominated for them, but of course to some degree such awards [National Book Award] are always subjective. — Charles Baxter

Look carefully at any region of the world where you find intractable enmity and violence between rival groups today. I cannot guarantee that you'll find religions as the dominant labels for in-groups and out-groups. But it's a good bet. — Richard Dawkins

I don't know what first got me to attack melons. It's not like I ate a bad one and got an upset stomach. It just eventually seemed like the appropriate fruit. — Ricky Jay