Eleanor Catton Quotes

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

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

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

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

Making the best-seller list is a big deal; it's like being nominated for an Oscar. Hitting No. 1 is like actually winning the award. It's very gratifying.

Oh, I've become immune to the Booker. I think we need something a little more like the Pulitzer prize, where there isn't this great race.

I'm never going to be in danger of getting the Nobel Prize for literature.

I said in my acceptance speech that I hope that readers remember this not as the year I won the Booker, but the year that there were six extraordinary books on the shortlist.

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

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

People aren't quite sure what it means when a book is a Booker Prize winner. They're not quite sure what is being recommended, what literary values it stands for, because every year it stands for something different.

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

I'm an idiot who won the Literature Nobel Prize.

Winning the second Pulitzer firmly places me in conversation with this culture.

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.

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.

It's a strange failure of the literary world that Updike never quite received his due. Despite winning two Pulitzers and two National Book Awards and countless other awards and honours, he was denied the Nobel.

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

The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.

If I can hit No. 1 on the 'New York Times' best-seller list, I'm thinking of having the entire list tattooed on my body somewhere. It would be fabulous.

I thought they would never select an Eastern writer for the Nobel. I was surprised.

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.

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

I'm not going to give it the big 'I am' now that I'm a New York Times bestseller.

Writers are not celebrities, so you don't expect to walk down the street and hear, 'Oh my God, there's Sylvia Day.' You prefer to be anonymous.