Junot Diaz Quotes

It seemed impossible that a scrappy book like 'Goon Squad' could win an award like that. It's such an iconic honor. I think what the Pulitzer means to me is that I'll need to work very, very hard to try to live up to it.

There's something very strange about associating me with that prize. I had hoped for it in a more directed way as a journalist. Somehow as a journalist you know there are Pulitzers out there and you can work hard and get one. To win it for Fiction seems unbelievable.

I am, incidentally, the only writer to have received the Somerset Maugham award twice - the first time for my first novel, the second time for my second first novel.

There can be no better prize for a writer than one awarded by an international book fair.

I write short stories when a little idea occurs to me, that I know isn't a part of a novel that will stand by itself and should be concentrated.

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

When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing.

In Australia, the Man Booker is sometimes seen as something of a chicken raffle.

'Ancillary Sword' picked up the Locus and the BSFA, which surprised the heck out of me.

I have always loved short stories. I have been at least as influenced by the short story masters as I have been by novelists.

I would never have thought my collection of short stories would win the Giller.

I approached writing a story for the CBC Literary Awards as a mercenary venture - $5,000 for one story, not bad. Now, how do you win it? Jurors are wading through skyscrapers of paper, looking for one story that stands out.

If I were a writer, the Pulitzer Prize would be important to me. This is my profession, so an Oscar is important.

When I first started writing, I did mostly short fiction, and I'd work on a short story and get near to being done and have no idea what I'd work on next, and then I'd panic.

I'd like my writing to be recognized with a Grammy.

I associated excellence in writing with New York City.

In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life.

Short stories, for me, it's like you step inside this brand new car and you drive it and you drive it into a tree and you walk away from it.

I'm always writing across the same themes. But with short stories, I'm doing something different than with novels. In some ways, they're coming from a much deeper place.

The two endorsements I'm most proud of come from Isabel Wilkerson and Toni Morrison. The latter is the greatest American fiction writer of our time, and the former is on her way to being the greatest American nonfiction writer of our time.

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.

When I was in my early 20s and still at uni, I won a short-story competition: £200 was the prize.

My favorite books to give or get are short story collections. And always paperbacks because they are easy to carry as you travel.

I've never been a true fan of the short story and have only published a single example of my own.

I hate to tell you this, but I did not know what the National Book Award was when I got the call.