Pulitzer Quotes & Sayings

I don't like my whole life dragged out. I don't want anyone to know about me, because I don't think I'm very interesting ... I like my work. I like what I gave. And that was it. — Lilly Pulitzer

It's always summer somewhere. — Lilly Pulitzer

I was a gypsy, living a carefree life of ponies and tennis. — Lilly Pulitzer

I am deeply interested in the progress and elevation of journalism, having spent my life in that profession, regarding it as a noble profession and one of unequaled importance for its influence upon the minds and morals of the people. — Joseph Pulitzer

The paper nominated me 12 or 13 times for the Pulitzer Prize. — Robert Scheer

What you could be. — Anthony Doerr

But most of all books (I say again and again) are like the Thirty-Mile Woman from Toni Morrison's Beloved: 'She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.' ~ Junot Diaz, author of the Pulitzer Prize novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. — Leah Price

Despite the forecast, live like it's spring. — Lilly Pulitzer

We were taught to always put on a good face, even when things are going poorly. We were told to "keep sweet," an admonition to be compliant and pleasant no matter the circumstance. Since we couldn't reveal our angry words and feelings, they got bottled up inside, and often there was no communication at all. — Lisa Pulitzer

Qwilleran's Siamese cat was a celebrity at the Press Club. Koko's portrait hung in the lobby along with Pulitzer Prize winners, and he was probably the only cat in the history of journalism who had his own press card signed by the chief of police. Although Qwilleran's suspicious nature and inquisitive mind had brought a few criminals to justice, it was commonly understood at the Press Club that the brains behind his success belonged to a feline of outstanding intelligence and sensory perception. Koko always seemed to sniff or scratch in the right place at the right time. — Lilian Jackson Braun

'To Kill a Mockingbird' appeared to highly favorable reviews and quickly climbed to the top of bestseller lists, where it remained for more than eighty weeks. In 1961, the novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. A film adaptation was released in 1962, starring Gregory Peck, and received three Academy Awards. — Charles J. Shields

I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing - to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics - Well, they can do whatever they wish. — Isaac Asimov

Pulitzer's Gold is a goldmine of inspiration for both journalists and non-journalists. Those in the newspaper business, who now find themselves obsessing about staff cutbacks and circulation declines, should embrace this book as a reminder of the highest ideals, and the absolute thrills, to be found in their profession. As for regular readers, Pulitzer's Gold offers marvelous storytelling, real-life adventures, and absolute proof that journalism can change our world for the better. — Jeffrey Zaslow

Choose the beautiful story, with the bright lights, the one where he can hear us," she told him. "That's the true one. Not the scary story, not the sharks." "But isn't it more scary to be utterly alone upon the waters, completely cut off from everyone, no friends, no family, no direction, nothing but a radio for solace?" She touched the side of his face. "That's your story," she said. "You're trying to tell me your story, aren't you?" Jun Do stared at her. "Oh, you poor boy," she said. "You poor little boy. It doesn't have to be that way. Come in off the water, things can be different. You don't need a radio, I'm right here. You don't have to choose the alone." ========== The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) (Johnson, Adam) — Anonymous

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies and directed by Sundance nominee James Ponsoldt, 'The End of the Tour' is a terrific film, among the year's best with its two-man tarantella of wall-to-wall talk - and I watched it through my fingers as though it were Mad Max. — Steve Erickson

And every year, Ronald McDonald takes the Pulitzer. — Donald Hall

The Lilly girl is always full of surprises. She lives everyday like it's a celebration, never has a dull moment, and makes every hour a happy hour. — Lilly Pulitzer

Seeing Michelle Obama's bright color choices, and how she made people smile and reinforced Obama's platforms of hope and change, was inspiring. — Lilly Pulitzer

I don't want to hate the president
i don't want to go to harvard
i don't want to win the pulitzer prize
i just want to sit in my bathtub
and think about relationships i will never have
with people i will never meet
and then go lay in my bed
with a magnifying glass
and count all the stiches in my sheets
until i fall asleep
and wake up
to repeat again. — Ellen Kennedy

If there were a Pulitzer for bleak irony, however, it would go to the News for its Saturday-morning report on one of the most important local stories of the year - the Galveston count of the 1900 U.S. census, which the newspaper had first announced on Friday. The news was excellent: Over the last decade of the nineteenth century, the city's population had increased by 29.93 percent, the highest growth rate of any southern city counted so far. — Erik Larson

To say the Israelis were caught off guard was like saying the Great Wall of China is long" is not just a random bad sentence, it's LaHaye and Jenkins's idea of Pulitzer-winning prose. — Daniel Radosh

I loved my boarding school, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't have a career. — Lilly Pulitzer

Before 1975, if you knew the name Howard Sackler it was because he was the author behind the 1969 Broadway play The Great White Hope, which won Sackler the Tony and New York Drama Critics Circle award as the year's Best Play as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A friend of film producer David Brown, Sackler accepted the offer to do a re-write on Jaws author Peter Benchley's script for the film version of his novel. Sackler's main contribution to the story was the back story that the shark fisherman, Quint, derived his hatred for sharks from having survived the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis in July of 1945 (in the film, Quint errantly states the date as "June the 29th, 1945"). — Louis R. Pisano

I'm fully aware that not every cartoon is Pulitzer material. That said, I'm proud of my Pulitzer portfolio, the 20 that got judged. — Steve Breen

Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind of people who only ask one to pretend! — Edith Wharton

I always say, I'm certain I changed 'Watchmen' less than the Coen brothers changed 'No Country for Old Men.' I'm certain of it. But you don't hear the Cormac McCarthy fans, like, up in arms about it. They should be. It's like an amazing Pulitzer Prize-winning book. — Zack Snyder

A journalist is the lookout on the bridge of the ship of state. He notes the passing sail, the little things of interest that dot the horizon in fine weather. He reports the drifting castaway whom the ship can save. He peers through fog and storm to give warning of dangers ahead. He is not thinking of his wages or of the profits of his owners. He is there to watch over the safety and the welfare of the people who trust him. — Joseph Pulitzer

A newspaper that is true to its purpose concerns itself not only with the way things are
but with the way they ought to be. — Joseph Pulitzer

I am a writer, a professional journalist with serious credentials in Crime, Craziness, and Politics. I have mingled with dangerous criminals and attended many trials ... from Hell's Angels, Black Panthers and Chicano street fighters to Roxanne Pulitzer and even Richard Nixon, back in the good old days before he was run out of the White House for fraud, perjury, graft, and criminal negligence. — Hunter S. Thompson

A generation of reporters saw the Washington Post win a Pulitzer for exposing the scandal, and many dreamed of being the next Woodward or Bernstein. A strong and skeptical press corps is good for democracy. Often the media's first instinct is to portray every story as a scandal, however, which presents a distorted picture of government and leaves the public cynical. — George W. Bush

Cunningham himself said in an interview in Poz that he couldn't help noticing that as soon as he wrote a novel without a blowjob, they gave him the Pulitzer Prize. — Christopher Bram

I desire to assist in attracting to this profession young men of character and ability, also to help those already engaged in the profession to acquire the highest moral and intellectual training. — Joseph Pulitzer

There was a lull. Sammy was staring across the room at George Opdyke, the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner. I was about to say he was lost in thought, but Sammy was never really lost, and he never actually thought, for that implied deep reflection. He was figuring. Miss Goldblum edged her undernourished white hand into his. Sammy played with it absent-mindedly, like a piece of silverware. — Budd Schulberg

Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together," Pulitzer wrote. "An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations. — Joseph Pulitzer

I think that no matter whether you're Quentin Tarantino or any other kind of a rebel, or whatever, everyone who makes movies still wants to win an Academy Award, because it's like the Pulitzer Prize or the Congressional Medal of Honor. — Robert Osborne

Winning the Pulitzer is not that big a deal. I have seen hundreds of plays that have won the prize and you couldn't sit half way through it. The Pulitzer is a common prize that means very little. — Richard Harris

Warming up for the Brewers is that lefthander they got from the Mets, Bill Pulitzer. — Mike Shannon

I don't believe I can let this subject pass by leaving my own conflicted emotions unconfessed. When Carl Sagan won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1978, I dismissed it as a minor achievement for a scientist, scarcely worth listing. When I won the same prize the following year, it wondrously became a major literary award of which scientists should take special note. — Edward O. Wilson

The Pulitzer is a crapshoot. Your piece has to hit a few people the right way at the right moment. — Gene Weingarten

I was challenged to a fistfight by Margo Jefferson, the Pulitzer Prize winner, New York Times writer, who is part of a feminist clique at the Times, which believes that Black men are the principal threat to the women of the world. — Ishmael Reed

Wear pink and make the boys wink. — Lilly Pulitzer

Money is the great power today. Men sell their souls for it. Women sell their bodies for it. Others worship it. The money power has grown so great that the issue of all issues is whether the corporation shall rule this country or the country shall again rule the corporations. — Joseph Pulitzer

For nearly a decade, their secret remained safe. Rumors of a lab study devoted to sex, operating in the heart of St. Louis, never appeared on television or radio or in print. As a personal favor to Masters, St. Louis Globe-Democrat publisher Richard Amberg vowed his daily newspaper wouldn't breathe a word to its readers. The city's other competing paper, owned by Pulitzer, stayed mum. Reporters for the Associated Press and United Press International, the two wire services beaming scoops across the world, also knew of this sensational human experiment but refused to say anything to the American public. — Thomas Maier

I was a finalist for the Pulitzer as a reporter. — Robert Scheer

I'm not looking to write the great American novel, win a Pulitzer or teach history. I write to entertain my readers. — Dorothy Garlock

A Pulitzer Prize is awaiting the journalist who can find an American who dies of hunger, and probably the Nobel Prize for literature as well. — Tom Bethell

I want to talk to a nation, not to a select committee. — Joseph Pulitzer

So I think that in the beginning of your career you're just looking to work. Luckily for me, my first movie was 'Rabbit Hole' and I got to work with incredible people, a Pulitzer prize winning writer, John Cameron Mitchell, and all the actors involved. So it's tough, man, because you want to have credibility. — Miles Teller

When I arrived the News was three years old and Ed Lotterman was on the verge of a breakdown. To hear him talk you would think he'd been sitting at the very cross-corners of the earth, seeing himself as a combination of God, Pulitzer and the Salvation Army. He often swore that if all the people who had worked for the paper in those years could appear at one time before the throne of The Almighty
if they all stood there and recited their histories and their quirks and their crimes and their deviations
there was no doubt in his mind that God himself would fall down in a swoon and tear his hair. — Hunter S. Thompson

I designed collections around whatever struck my fancy ... fruits, vegetables, politics, or peacocks! I entered in with no business sense. — Lilly Pulitzer

This is the funniest book I've ever held in my hands.
Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize winning humorist and author says about Radical Sabbatical — Dave Barry

Not always sunny, but always in a sunny state of mind — Lilly Pulitzer

Pulitzer is a word but accomplishment is an aura. — Chila Woychik

All you have to do [to win a Pulitzer Prize] is spend your life running from one awful place to another, write about every horrible thing you see. The civilized world reads about it, then forgets it, but pats you on the head for doing it and gives you a reward as appreciation for changing nothing. — David Baldacci

The Post-Dispatch will serve no party but the people; be no organ of Republicanism, but the organ of truth; will follow no causes bit its conclusions; will not support the Administration, but criticize it; will oppose all frauds and shams wherever or whatever they are; will advocate principles and ideas rather than prejudices and partisanship. — Joseph Pulitzer

The distinctive crimes of this generation are crimes of subtlety and finesse.
- ALEXANDER S. BACON 1908 — J.M. Carlisle

Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something
(All The King's Men) — Robert Penn Warren

If you found yourself in a situation where you could either save a drowning man, or you could take a Pulitzer prize winning photograph of him drowning, what shutter speed and setting would you use? — Paul Harvey

I would rather have one article a day of this sort; and these ten or twenty lines might readily represent a whole day's hard work in the way of concentrated, intense thinking and revision, polish of style, weighing of words. — Joseph Pulitzer

We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its State, its National conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on.There isnot a crime, there isnot a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away. — Joseph Pulitzer

The thing is, if you make best-sellerdom your goal, you're going to be in trouble. It's a very nice thing to have happen, but if one makes that a goal like, say, a literary writer has the goal of getting the Pulitzer Prize, that's so unpredictable. — Diane Mott Davidson

The brevity of our lives breeds a kind of temporal parochialism - an ignorance of or an indifference to those planetary gears which turn more slowly than our own. — Kathryn Schulz

I didn't set out to be unusual or different. I just wanted to do things my way. — Lilly Pulitzer

I thought, after the Pulitzer, at least nothing will surprise me quite that much in my life. And another one happened. It was quite amazing. — Rita Dove

Winning the Pulitzer is wonderful and it's an honor and I feel so humbled and so grateful, but I think that I'll think of it very much as the final sort of final moment for this book and put it behind me along with the rest of the book, as I write more books. — Jhumpa Lahiri

According to a new book coming out by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, apparently when he was in high school, President Obama smoked large amounts of marijuana. You know what that means? He could be our first green president. — Jay Leno

I once owned a collection of 77 novels that won the Pulitzer. The only good novel of the bunch was The Grapes of Wrath. — Larry McMurtry

In 2009, New York Times reporter Matt Richtel earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting with a series of articles ("Driven to Distraction") on the dangers of driving while texting or using cell phones. He found that distracted driving is responsible for 16 percent of all traffic fatalities and nearly half a million injuries annually. Even an idle phone conversation when driving takes a 40 percent bite out of your focus and, surprisingly, can have the same effect as being drunk. The — Gary Keller

An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. — Joseph Pulitzer

My eyes widened at the ball of orange fluff squeezing out from under the counter, blinking and stretching.
I looked again, not believing.
"It's a cat," I said, winning the Pulitzer prize for incredible intellect. — Kim Harrison

One could get locked in by the Pulitzer, thinking, 'This is who I am.' Doors open with it, but doors in your mind could close. — Suzan-Lori Parks

My especial object is to help the poor; the rich can help themselves. I believe in self-made men. — Joseph Pulitzer

He was bursting with enthusiasms. He probably loved many things: the hawk in flight, the god-damned ocean, full moon, Balzac, bridges, stage plays, the Pulitzer Prize, the piano, the god-damned Bible. — Charles Bukowski

Murder is illegal, but if you take a picture of it you may get your name in a magazine or maybe win a Pulitzer Prize. However, sex is legal, but if you take a picture of that act, you can go to jail. — Larry Flynt

All that a Pulitzer really does is give the obit writers something to put between the commas after your name. — Eddie Adams

we are all like poems.
some of us rhyme. some don't.
some are Pulitzer prizes
some are just scribbles

and yet, we all possess
a special kind of beauty

that can either heal
or cut to the bone

one that can never quite
be fathomed, nor forgotten. — Sanober Khan

There is room in this great and growing city for a journal that is not only cheap but bright, not only bright but large, not only large but truly democratic-dedicated to the cause of the people rather than that of the purse potentates-devoted more to the news of the New than the Old World-that will expose all fraud and sham, fight all public evils and abuses-that will sever and battle for the people with earnest sincerity. — Joseph Pulitzer

What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation and accuracy, accuracy, accuracy. — Joseph Pulitzer

Imagine Pulitzer prizefighting. — Steven Wright

People were murdered for the camera; and some photographers and a television camera crew departed without taking a picture in the hope that in the absence of cameramen acts might not be committed. Others felt that the mob was beyond appeal to mercy. They stayed and won Pulitzer Prizes. Were they right? — Harold Evans

To date, [Wynton] Marsalis has received a total of nine Grammy Awards; a Pulitzer Prize (the first ever awarded to a jazz musician) ... and twenty-nine honorary degrees, including Columbia, Brown, Princeton and Yale; the National Medal of Arts; and numerous awards from other countries. — Randy Sandke

I adore [my son]. I wouldn't trade him in for a Pulitzer - unless someone actually offered that as an option. — Arthur M. Jolly

There will be a moment of silence while our prints do the talking. — Lilly Pulitzer

I was in 27 Broadway plays, and three of them got the Pulitzer Prize. — Dick Van Patten

A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will in time produce a people as base as itself. — Joseph Pulitzer

In 1922 everything changed again. The Eskimo pie was invented; James Joyce's Ulysses was printed in Paris; snow fell on Mauna Loa, Hawaii; Babe Ruth signed a three-year contract with the New York Yankees; Eugene O'Neill was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Frederick Douglass's home was dedicated as a national shrine; former heavyweight champion of the world Jack Johnson invented the wrench ... — Bernice L. McFadden

There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy. — Joseph Pulitzer

I pretty much only wear Lilly Pulitzer ties because my best friend owns the company. — Harlan Coben

After I won the Pulitzer, there was this sense of, 'OK, that's enough for you. Now go away.' What I wanted was to keep writing, keep working. But no one would produce anything of mine they didn't think would be as big as 'night, Mother.' — Marsha Norman

The Pulitzer is more useful than meaningful. — Annie Dillard

I don't think that the Pulitzer should be given the way it is. I think the competition should be anonymous. I think completely different people would win it if the names were taken off because a lot of it is done on relationships and names. — John Corigliano

Pulitzer was the first to cram a paper with pictures and games under shrieking headlines. He offered eight packed pages of thrilling content for only two cents. — Al Roker

Winning the Pulitzer is a really mellow, fabulous thing. You don't sit and wait for them to open an envelope. You already know you won, and you have a nice lunch. Oscars are more stressful. I had to sit for three hours and wait for my category. I had to fly to Los Angeles. For the Pulitzer I just had to go up to Columbia. But, while the president of Columbia gave me the Pulitzer, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck gave me the Oscar, so that was better. — John Patrick Shanley

I am a believer that color affects people's moods. — Lilly Pulitzer

I'm glad I won it because when I grew up the Pulitzer was the award that every composer wanted and I was like that too. — John Corigliano

The great 'New York Times' columnist Dave Anderson famously slept one year in a child's race-car bed. There he was, Pulitzer Prize and all, snoring as his feet dangled over the rear tires of Lightning McQueen. — Willie Geist

Utter objectivity ... is not only impossible when judging literature, it's not exactly desirable. Fiction involves trace elements of magic; it works for reasons we can explain and also for reasons we can't. If novels or short-story collections could be weighed strictly in terms of their components (fully developed characters, check; original voice, check; solidly crafted structure, check; serious theme, check) they might satisfy, but they would fail to enchant. A great work of fiction involves a certain frisson that occurs when its various components cohere and then ignite.
(Source: "Letter from the Pulitzer Fiction Jury: What Really Happened This Year" in The New Yorker.) — Michael Cunningham

You have the feeling that if you get a Pulitzer, you're somehow set for life. — John Sandford

Anything is possible with sunshine and a little pink. — Lilly Pulitzer

I did a play called 'Disgraced' in 2012 at Lincoln Center, which ultimately won the Pulitzer Prize. I played the lead character, a Muslim American, who had renounced Islam and became very anti-Islam. — Aasif Mandvi