Booker Prize Quotes & Sayings

I'll always struggle over saying I'm a writer, even if I won the Booker Prize. — Sonya Hartnett

[On being a judge for the 1986 Booker Prize:] I got to the point where I couldn't read a laundry list without considering it for the Booker Prize. — Bernice Rubens

I'd like to win a Booker Prize for writing. A Nobel Peace Prize for my work in peace ... and I think that'll probably do. — Billy Boyd

People aren't quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They're not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values it stands for, because every year it stands for something different. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The opening line of her last column was: You know you really don't fit in with the other housewives you meet when the only way you can contribute to a discussion about babies is by saying, "Yes, that's what my mother used to do." It went on to talk about how a woman could climb Everest, teach schoolchildren in Cambodia and win the Booker Prize but some people would still think she had good news only when she produced progeny. — Shweta Ganesh Kumar

Hakeem: A wise man once said that suffering produces perseverance, character; and character, hope.
Andre: Since when did spouting masochism make one wise? And the sacraments of a bitter existence? Who deemed that a vaunted prize? Nihilistic philosophy only births more pain. It's fruitless to espouse folly, repackage it as wisdom, and spew it in a wise man's name. — Booker T. Mattison

My father always had doubts about the Booker prize, although they evaporated on the announcement that he had won it. — Martin Amis

Is the prestige conferred by the Man Booker prize for the book or me? I would prefer it on the book and for me to be treated ordinarily. — Eleanor Catton

I noticed that in a corner, across from where they ate with such innocent relish, sitting forlorn and abandoned, was the ghost of their son. He had lost both of his arms, one side of his face was squashed, and both his eyes had burst. He had bluish wings. He was the saddest ghost in the house. — Ben Okri

There is solid evidence for the fact that when women speak more than 30 percent of the time, men perceive them as dominating the conversation; well, similarly, if, say, two women in a row get one of the big annual literary awards, masculine voices start talking about feminist cabals, political correctness, and the decline of fairness in judging. The 30 percent rule is really powerful. If more than one woman out of four or five won the Pulitzer, the PEN/Faulkner, the Booker - if more than one woman in ten were to win the Nobel literature prize - the ensuing masculine furore would devalue and might destroy the prize. Apparently, literary guys can only compete with each other. Put on a genuinely equal competitive footing with women, they get hysterical. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Thirty-one days later, in the summer of 1981, he became a full-time writer, and the feeling of liberation as he left the agency for the last time was heady and exhilarating. He shed advertising like an unwanted skin, though he continued to take a sneaky pride in his bestknown slogan, "Naughty but nice" (created for the Fresh Cream Cake Client), and in his "bubble words" campaign for Aero chocolate (IRRESISTIBUBBLE, DELECTABUBBLE, ADORABUBBLE, the billboards cried, and bus sides read TRANSPORTABUBBLE, trade advertising said PROFITABUBBLE, and storefront decals proclaimed AVAILABUBBLE HERE). Later that year, when Midnight's Children was awarded the Booker Prize, the first telegram he received - there were these communications called "telegrams" in those days - was from his formerly puzzled boss. "Congratulations," it read. "One of us made it. — Salman Rushdie

Oh, I've become immune to the Booker. I think we need something a little more like the Pulitzer prize, where there isn't this great race. — Ian McEwan

I am not expecting anyone to feel sorry for me, but when friends ask how it feels to be a debut novelist who has also been long listed for the Man Booker prize, I have to admit that my response has confused me. I am so overwhelmed, so delighted, so honoured and so surprised, I have come out in a violent cold. — Rachel Joyce

The Commonwealth Prize is about celebrating the Commonwealth and the special relationship we have with the ex-colonies - which is part guilt and part warmth - and the Booker Prize isn't an essential part of that, but it is part of that. — Jim Crace

The Booker Prize is a big, popular prize for big, popular books, and that's the way it should be. — John Banville

Norwich is a fine city. None finer. If there is another city in the United Kingdom with a school of painters named after it, a matchless modern art gallery, a university with a reputation for literary excellence which can boast Booker Prize-winning alumni, one of the grandest Romanesque cathedrals in the world, and an extraordinary new state-of-the-art library then I have yet to hear of it. — Stephen Fry