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.
President Obama awarded a National Medal of Arts to author Stephen King. You know, because if there's anyone who can relate to the story of a guy trapped in a mansion that's driving him insane, it's Obama.
What a thrill it is to have my writing recognized by an institution as admirable and vital as the National Endowment for the Arts.
Nowadays, what an award gives is a sense of solidarity with the poetry guild, as it were: sustenance coming from the assent of your peers on the judging panel.
I won the Nobel prize for literature. What was your crime?
I'm an idiot who won the Literature Nobel Prize.
I hate to tell you this, but I did not know what the National Book Award was when I got the call.
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.
I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never plotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand.
What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones,- The labour of an age in piled stones? Or that his hallow'd relics should be hid Under a star-y-pointing pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
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.
In the world of literature, I see prizes as more of a duty to the craft itself, rather than as something for the individual.
I'm never going to be in danger of getting the Nobel Prize for literature.
It's quite humbling when you see the list of writers who have been president of PEN and you know some of the things they've done.
I'm so thrilled to have won the RITA. The award is particularly special because it is given by other romance authors. It's deeply rewarding and not a little humbling to be honored by such a talented tribe of writers.
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 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.
The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.
This medal (the National Book Award) together with my American Express card, will identify me worldwide ... except at Bloomingdale's.
I am, of course, greatly honoured to win the Booker, which is one of the great literary prizes in the world.
It's almost uncanny to receive a prize named in honor of Bernard Malamud. I must have been in my early teens when 'The Magic Barrel' was published and I first read it.
The IMPAC is a terribly important award.
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.
It seems to me that to take a book of mine into his hands is one of the rarest distinctions that anyone can confer upon himself. I even assume that he removes his shoes when he does so-not to speak of boots.
