Lynn Coady Quotes

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

Being shortlisted for the Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prize is, of course, a real honour for me and my work. When I wrote 'Conversations with Friends,' it was hard for me to imagine the book even finding readers - so it's a huge privilege to find it judged alongside such exciting and innovative new writing. I'm very grateful.

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.

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 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.

I do what I love and what I always dreamed of doing for a living. I write love stories, and I have always had a publisher willing to publish them. I have a sizable and loyal audience. I have made best-seller lists and won awards. What more could anyone ask for?

My first novel was a critical success in a matter of weeks.

I don't aspire at present to be king of the hill in American literature.

You say that you hope I will be recognized as the best novelist of my generation. I want you to know now and know completely that that would mean to me absolutely nothing.

Publishers send me a lot of first novels because my first novel was the defining novel of my career, and I guess a lot of people want my benediction or something.

I was very pleased, obviously, to have outsold great writers. But I'm not insane - I do realise that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation.

The Room I wrote in 1957, and I was really gratified to find that it stood up. I didn't have to change a word.

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

As a young poet, you need corroboration, and that's what publication does.

If you appear in the 'Atlantic' or 'Harper's' or the 'New Yorker,' by God, you must be a writer, because everybody says so.

Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of wealth.

I'll always struggle over saying I'm a writer, even if I won the Booker Prize.

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

I was very pleased, obviously, to have outsold such great writers. But I'm not insane - I do realize that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation.

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

I've written fiction... but the nonfiction has always received the most attention.

I think the greatest reward you get as a writer is finding that people who are reasonably receptive and intelligent have liked your book.

It's taken me 15 years to feel I might be able to write and publish short stories, and for the assiduous checks of the industry to allow some through.

I was just delighted to be a legitimate, for-real published author.