Rachel Joyce Quotes

I was blown away by the standing ovation. I've had tributes before, sure, but I don't retain that feeling, and I wasn't prepared for it on Tuesday. But maybe you shouldn't retain these things or you'd be on a permanent high.

The fact that people are already reading and loving something I wrote is still hard to believe.

I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about!

There is nothing that compares to an unexpected round of applause.

I didn't ever imagine, except in the most idle, obviously wish-fulfillment, ego-gratification fantasies, that anything I wrote would ever win awards, let alone so many.

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.

I can't say that winning the Pen/Faulkner was a dream come true because I would never have dared to dream it.

I'm awkward at these things. Just being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Karate Kid was a real surprise and I was a little uncomfortable.

I was always so relieved that anyone wants to publish anything I've written.

I wanted to see my name on the cover of a book. If your name is in the Library of Congress, you're immortal.

I'm glad a genre writer has got a knighthood, but stunned that it was me.

I'm very proud of the fact that I'm one of Britain's biggest selling poets. That gives me a huge amount of pleasure.

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.

When I won the Tony, I blacked out. I don't remember anything. I had bullet points jotted down, but I forgot to read half of them. My hands were shaking. It was an insane honor to be recognized in that way.

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

If you're not going to wear a tiara when you win a Newbery Award, when are you going to wear one?

There has long been an argument in New York about what, exactly, the purpose of book awards ought to be. One model sees them as a celebration of the unquestioned best and brightest, a triumphal parade for marquee authors who have published in a given year.

You get early inoculation against the idea of success if you're a poet. When I published my first collection of sonnets, I sold about five copies; now kids study them for A level. Wanting to be successful in that other world of money or fame is not interesting. Poetry isn't like that, and it never has been.

It still hasn't kicked in yet. I haven't had a second to think about it. And I don't physically have the Grammy! So I can't even look at it!

When they gave me that trophy, bro, I cried.

Every writer aspires to recognition , and it comes entirely privately, without public fanfare, each time a piece of work is judged worthy of publication.

To be quite honest, the joyful relief of the publication of my book was short-lived.

I can't believe I actually wrote a book.

When it comes to the awards and everything, and the press, the publicity, this is all icing on the cake to me.

Literature is one of those realms in which giving out prizes can seem not merely dubious but positively obtuse.