National Book Award Winner Quotes

Home is about the earth. Whether the earth open up to you. Whether it pull you so close the space between you and it melt and y'all one and it beats like your heart. ~ Jesmyn Ward

NO MUSE IS GOOD MUSE
-by Rochelle Distelheim
To be an Artist you need talent, as well as a wife
who washes the socks and the children,
and returns phone calls and library books and types.
In other words, the reason there are so many more
Men Geniuses than Women Geniuses is not Genius.
It is because Hemingway never joined the P.T.A.
And Arthur Rubinstein ignored Halloween.
Do you think Portnoy's creator sits through children's theater
matinees--on Saturdays?
Or that Norman Mailer faced 'driver's ed' failure,
chicken pox or chipped teeth?
Fitzgerald's night was so tender because the fender
his teen-ager dented happened when Papa was at a story conference.
Since Picasso does the painting, Mrs. Picasso did the toilet training.
And if Saul Bellow, National Book Award winner, invited thirty-three
for Thanksgiving Day dinner, I'll bet he had help.
I'm sure Henry Moore was never a Cub Scout leader,
and Leonard Bernstein never instructed a tricycler
On becoming a bicycler just before he conducted.
Tell me again my anatomy is not necessarily my destiny,
tell me my hang-up is a personal and not a universal quandary,
and I'll tell you no muse is a good muse
unless she also helps with the laundry.
-Rochelle Distelheim
=============================== ~ Rochelle Distelheim

NO MUSE IS GOOD MUSE

To be an Artist you need talent, as well as a wife
who washes the socks and the children,
and returns phone calls and library books and types.
In other words, the reason there are so many more
Men Geniuses than Women Geniuses is not Genius.
It is because Hemingway never joined the P.T.A.
And Arthur Rubinstein ignored Halloween.
Do you think Portnoy's creator sits through children's theater
matinees--on Saturdays?
Or that Norman Mailer faced 'driver's ed' failure,
chicken pox or chipped teeth?
Fitzgerald's night was so tender because the fender
his teen-ager dented happened when Papa was at a story conference.
Since Picasso does the painting, Mrs. Picasso did the toilet training.
And if Saul Bellow, National Book Award winner, invited thirty-three
for Thanksgiving Day dinner, I'll bet he had help.
I'm sure Henry Moore was never a Cub Scout leader,
and Leonard Bernstein never instructed a tricycler
On becoming a bicycler just before he conducted.
Tell me again my anatomy is not necessarily my destiny,
tell me my hang-up is a personal and not a universal quandary,
and I'll tell you no muse is a good muse
unless she also helps with the laundry. ~ Rochelle Distelheim

The only ingenuity I can see is Gaddis' wherewithal in getting this brick published, printed, and hyped-up enough to win the National Book Award. Did he use coercion, bribery, blackmail perhaps? Did he have incriminating evidence on certain influential literary critics and talking heads, like pictures of them with farm animals or something? ~ A. Cretan

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. ~ Victor LaValle

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I was thrilled when this year's National Book Award for Young People's Literature went to Neal Schusterman's 'Challenger Deep.' This brilliant book takes you into the mind of a mentally ill teenager and deserves all the accolades it's received. ~ John Corey Whaley

I'm a big, bombastic novelist and thrill-ride guy. I'm never going to win the National Book Award. ~ Seth Grahame-Smith

Everyone is irrational some of the time and in particular everyone is susceptible to the availability error. I give a final striking example ... In 1969, Jerzy Kosinsky's novel Steps won the American National Book Award for fiction. Eight years later some joker had it retyped and sent the manuscript with no title and under a false name to fourteen major publishers and thirteen literary agents in the US, including ... the firm that had originally published it. Of the twenty-seven people to whom it was submitted, not one recognised that it had already been published. Moreover, all twenty-seven rejected it. All it lacked was Jerzy Kosinsky's name to create the halo effect: without the name, it was seen as an indifferent book. ~ Stuart Sutherland

Ward: Which would you rather have, a National Book Award or a Hugo?
Le Guin: Oh, a Nobel, of course.
Ward: They don't give Nobel Awards in fantasy.
Le Guin: Maybe I can do something for peace. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

John Williams is best known for his novels, Nothing But the Night, Stoner, Butcher's Crossing, and Augustus, for which he won the National Book Award in 1973. ~ John Edward Williams

Reading fiction - excerpts from National Book Award finalists, winners of the Pen/O. Henry Prize for short stories, or even Amazon bestsellers - has been shown to enhance theory of mind: ~ Margaret Heffernan

It's better to be nominated for awards than not to be nominated for them, but of course to some degree such awards [National Book Award] are always subjective. ~ Charles Baxter

This medal (the National Book Award) together with my American Express card, will identify me worldwide ... except at Bloomingdale's. ~ S.J Perelman

Adrienne Rich was one of the most widely-read and influential poets of her time, a leading feminist, known especially for her politically-engaged verse. Her best-known volume, "Diving into the Wreck," won the National Book Award in 1973. ~ Earl Scruggs

The novel remains for me one of the few forms ... where we can describe, step by step, minute by minute, our not altogether unpleasant struggle to put ourselves into a viable and devout relationship to our beloved and mistaken world. ~ John Cheever

Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.
(Acceptance speech, National Book Award 2010 (Nonfiction), November 17, 2010) ~ Patti Smith

Opening the book is a quotation from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops that sums up the Prager-Telushkin view: It was Judaism that brought the concept of a God-given universal moral law into the world ... The Jew carries the burden of God in history [and] for this has never been forgiven. ~ George Gilder

I have faced bullying before. Not in high school. Not in any school but when I published my now bestselling book series as an indie author back in 2010 through 2012 and became a target for indie publishing, especially in YA because I stood by Amazon self-publishing versus the traditional publishers. How I dealt with it? I kept doing what I love - writing and publishing, and giving my readers what they love. Indie publishing took off soon afterwards and now it is a valid and more desirable way to publish books. So the lesson learned is...don't let bullies stop you from doing what you love and from keeping you from giving your readers the books they love to read from you." - Kailin Gow in a National Radio Interview. ~ Kailin Gow

What a worthwhile pursuit! Jesus tells us in His word to ask...seek...knock. But how often do we sincerely follow His command? Through her award-winning book, Transformed by Desire, author Patty Mason challenges us to ask with expectation, seek with abandon, and knock with confidence, knowing that our Bridegroom--our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ--is ready to fulfill the deepest desires of our hearts. It's a love story that needs to be told over and over again! ~ Vonda Skelton

At 6:30, which was when the national news began, my father raised the volume and adjusted the antennas. Usually I occupied myself with a book, but that night my father insisted that I pay attention. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

The only nonhuman existence is what we call our human life. If we live our human life and none other, directly, then we subject ourselves to the most inhuman of all conditionsČ slavery to family and national taboos, wars, illness, poverty, deatah. Even the phrase "earning our living" is inhuman. Without religion or art or analysis to transpose the stark horror, we fall into the malady of our age with its great devotion to naturalism. A painting in a house is there to represent a color, a form, a realm we may not have been able to possess. A book opens a realm which our need to earn a living may have made unattainable. Everything that helps us to transpose the unbearable into a myth also helps the creation of distance from our inhuman life, to allow us to mix a little objectivity with the harsh, violent torments of our human bondage. ~ Anais Nin

Bookstores are temples and stories are my prayers. ~ Jaye Wells

Jacob smiled from ear to ear when he shook the man's hand on stage. The man then handed him a trophy. "Tell the audience about your book."
My little brother confidently walked up to a microphone his height and beamed to the crowd. "I wrote about the person I love the most, my older brother, Noah. We don't live together so I wrote what I imagine he does when we're not together."
"And what is that?" prodded the stout man.
"He's a superhero who saves people in danger, because he saved me and my brother from dying in a fire a couple of years ago. Noah is better than Batman." The crowd chuckled.
"I love you, too, lil' bro." I couldn't help it. To see him standing there, still worshipping me like he did when he was five … it was too much.
Jacob's smile reached a whole new level of excitement. "Noah!" He pointed right to me. "That's Noah. That's my brother, Noah!" Ignoring his foster parents, Jacob flew off the stage and ran down the middle aisle.
Joe lowered his head and Carrie rubbed her eyes. Jacob raced into my arms and the crowd erupted into applause.
"I've missed you, Noah." Jacob's voice broke, bringing tears to my eyes. I couldn't cry. Not in front of Jacob and not in front of Mrs. Collins. I needed to be a man and stay strong.
"I've missed you, too, bro. I'm so proud of you." ~ Katie McGarry

When Gordon the Brown, in London in 1997, commissioned a great inquisition or survey of his new realm, the result was the so-called national asset register, which was immediately dubbed by the boomers of the UK Treasury 'the modern Domesday Book.' ~ James Buchan

Is that...the Looney Tunes theme?"
Mer and St. Clair cock their ears.
"Why,yes.I believe it is," St. Clair says.
"I heard 'Love Shack' a few minutes ago," Mer says.
"It's official," I say. "America has finally ruined France."
"So can we go now?" St. Clair holds up a small bag. "I'm done."
"Ooo,what'd you get?" Mer asks. She takes his bag and pulls out a delicate, shimmery scarf. "Is it for Ellie?"
"Shite."
Mer pauses. "You didn't get anything for Ellie?"
"No,it's for Mum.Arrrgh." He rakes a hand through his hair. "Would you mind if we pop over to Sennelier before we go home?" Sennelier is a gorgeous little art supply sore,the kind that makes me wish I had an excuse to buy oil paints and pastels. Mer and I went with Rashmi last weekend. She bought Josh a new sketchbook for Hanukkah.
"Wow.Congratulations,St. Clair," I say. "Winner of today's Sucky Boyfriend award.And I thought Steve was bad-did you see what happened in calc?"
"You mean when Amanda caught him dirty-texting Nicole?" Mer asks. "I thought she was gonna stab him in the neck with her pencil."
"I've been busy," St. Clair says.
I glance at him. "I was just teasing."
"Well,you don't have to be such a bloody git about it."
"I wasn't being a git. I wasnt even being a twat, or a wanker, or any of your other bleeding Briticisms-"
"Piss off." He snatches his bag back from Mer and scowls at me.
"HEY!" Mer says. "It's Christmas. Ho-ho-ho. Deck ~ Stephanie Perkins

["Manning Up"'s] essays definitely nuance the idea of transitioning into a "shared manhood" (much like feminists of color have complicated the idea of "shared womanhood"). Trans men don't all transition to just become "men," which was one of the projects' cornerstone concepts. They become black men, white men, queer men, straight men, working class men, affluent men, fatherly men, single men, spiritual men, etc. etc. All of these mean different things when filtered through social and intimate, familial lenses.

One major boon of the growth in transgender literature ... is that we get to tease out these complexities in lives that will be popularly portrayed as monolithic unless we provide counter-scripts."

- from a National Book Critics Circle interview with writer Rigoberto Gonzalez ~ Mitch Kellaway

My first book was called 'Buried Dreams,' about a serial-killer, which was probably about ten years ahead of the serial-killer curve. It was a national bestseller, but it was three years of living in the sewer of this guy's mind. ~ Tim Cahill

Liberals pretend to believe that when two random hoodlums kill a gay man in Oklahoma, it's evidence of a national trend, but when a million people buy a book, it proves absolutely nothing about the book-buying public. ~ Ann Coulter

[On Jason Mashak's book SALTY AS A LIP, as reviewed in The Prague Post:] Mashak amalgamates various national, historical and religious traditions into a myth-mash that illuminates many sects' fanatical compartmentalizing, and the fact that so many religions and philosophies share similar goals, if not roots. ~ Stephan Delbos

If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Not juniper trees in general but that one particular juniper tree which grows from a ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to Arches National Monument. ~ Edward Abbey

'Paradise Lost' was printed in an edition of no more than 1,500 copies and transformed the English language. Took a while. Wordsworth had new ideas about nature: Thoreau read Wordsworth, Muir read Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt read Muir, and we got a lot of national parks. Took a century. What poetry gives us is an archive, the fullest existent archive of what human beings have thought and felt by the kind of artists who loved language in a way that allowed them to labor over how you make a music of words to render experience exactly and fully. ~ Robert Hass

Flipped through memories like old copies of National Geographic, pages in a yellowing high-school year book, cable-television channels looking for a baseball game. ~ Dennis Vickers

I had an insanely long commute - New York to D.C. - when I worked at 'National Geographic.' I hate to waste time, so I spent my time by writing about my life on the premise that I might be able to pitch those as short essays to magazines. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was writing a book. ~ Charles M. Blow

There's a book that I read, really a great book - it's called 'Lone Survivor' and I think they're trying to make it into a movie. I would love to play Marcus Luttrell, who was the author and the 'lone survivor.' He's a national hero; he's very courageous and heroic in insurmountable danger, so it's something I'd love to explore. ~ Jared Padalecki