Tony Bradman Quotes

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

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

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

To map the Governor General's Award is to map both the past and the future of Canadian literature, and to be nominated for my first book is wonderful.

Last year I was a judge for a prize in England, the T.S. Eliot Prize, so I read everything that was published in England last year.

One of the most widely read novels by a black American is Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man.' It is his masterwork - it won the National Book Award in 1953 and catapulted my man to the highest levels of literary esteem.

Children will come out and listen to a writer whose books they like. They don't need a government agency or a medal that says 'laureate' to continue that.

For me it's a remarkable thing that there is a prize celebrating and honouring and making for a brief moment short fiction the centre of the literary universe.

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

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.

One of my books, 'Rain Falling on My Face,' earned me the 39th Edogawa Ranpo prize. It's a very prestigious literary prize in Japan, mostly for mysteries and thrillers.

I'm sure I wouldn't have been asked to judge the Man Booker if it weren't for 'Downton.'

Every year, the Giller jury is different. You write the best book you can and throw it out there.

I judged about a zillion awards this year so I've been reading a lot of books that just came out.

I'm not at all snobby about book prizes and how they pollute the world of literature. Just like with the Olympics, a little bit of competition gets people truly engrossed in the business of literature.

You can't really win as a Booker judge. If you choose the obvious names, the unit-shifters, you're accused of being timid and unimaginative; if you choose the unfamous, you're labelled willful and perverse.

I also read modern novels - I have just had to read 60 as I am one of the judges for the Orange Fiction Prize.

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

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

All prizes have a role, if they are run with integrity and with a clear focus on reading and quality writing. I don't think any of them is necessary, but they all play an incredibly important role in building a body of literature, in introducing new authors to new readers, and extending reading.

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

I don't think if you're serious about literature your library is filled with award-winning books.

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.

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.