Quotes & Sayings About Literary Prizes

Though I have been busy, perhaps overbusy, all my life, it seems to me now that I have accomplished little that matters, that the books have never come up to what was in my head, and that the rewards - the comfortable income, the public notice, the literary prizes, and the honorary degrees - have been tinsel, not what a grown man should be content with. — Wallace Stegner

Now, let's imagine that we have been condemned for life to making, year in year out a burdensome and nearly impossible decision to which the world increasingly and inexplicably ascribes a crazy importance. How do we go about it? We look for some simple, rapid, and broadly acceptable criteria that will help us get this pain out of the way. And since, as Borges himself noted, aesthetics are difficult and require a special sensibility and long reflection while political affiliations are easier and quickly grasped, we begin to identify those areas of the world that have grabbed public attention, perhaps because of political turmoil or abuses of human rights; we find those authors who have already won a huge level of respect and possibly major prizes in the literary communities of these countries and who are outspokenly committed to the right side of whatever political divide we're talking about, and we select them. — Tim Parks

Literary prizes serve a purpose if they allow for discussion of books. — Richard Flanagan

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

I am, of course, greatly honoured to win the Booker, which is one of the great literary prizes in the world. — Richard Flanagan

I'm afraid your literary prizes don't give you any jurisdiction in this particular instance, sir. — Lizzie K. Foley

Something in me - probably a small, nationalist dwarf part of my brain - something in me would like to feel proud of Dutch literature. But its hard to when the annual 'book week gift' year in year out is granted to a male. I dont like being part of an unjust system. But let me say this: it is the election method that is the real problem here. The 'vergadering' (meeting) that employs a simple flagging system - the basic way almost everything is decided here, from literary prizes to how much money is divided - it is a system based on the destruction of subtle values. You cannot ever ever say: I didnt understand this book. You can only say 'yes' or 'no'. And that system, that annihilates all forms of subtlety, that system is patriarchal in all its essence. So its useless to simply maintain the method, and try alter the outcome. — Martijn Benders

If an artist is good, nobody else can do what he or she does and therefore all comparisons are incoherent. Only the mediocre, pushing forward a commonplace view of life in a commonplace language, can really be compared, but my wife thinks that "least mediocre of the mediocre" is a discouraging title for a prize[.] — Edward St. Aubyn

Generally, literary prizes are significant not for who the winner is but the discussion they create around books. — Richard Flanagan

It's not about fancy literary prizes. It's not about seeming impenetrable or smart or high fallutin. I'm not trying to impress anyone. I am trying to make you feel a story, that's all. — Maggie Stiefvater

Why is someone only passionate about books if they're into literary books that win prizes? Why can't you be passionate about books and only read romance? — Harriet Evans

There are celebrated literary lions who've won Pulitzers and Booker prizes for ideas that Dick would toss aside in an early chapter, but ... oh, what's the use. You evidently already know the score, because you're reading this. — Philip K. Dick

Nobel Prize in Literature [10w]
Only fools and Swedes equate literary prizes with literary merit. — Beryl Dov

For more than twenty years he [Blanchard] toiled on through the most fatiguing paths of literary composition, mostly in periodicals, often anonymously; pleasing and lightly instructing thousands, but gaining none of the prizes, whether of weighty reputation or popular renown, which more fortunate chances, or more pretending modes of investing talent, have given in our day to men of half his merits. — Samuel Laman Blanchard