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.

Library campaigners are not prepared to stand by and watch something they cherish be dismantled brick by brick.

What we attempt to do is not without danger. What we attempt to do may not succeed. But it is right and it is just. We act for the good of all.

People have different views of how you deal with different issues in literature, and, frankly, long may it last that there is a range of views.

Lots of people have objections to prizes of all types, and it would be extraordinary if everybody agreed on anything that's worthwhile - they never do.

History is written by the victors, the strongest, the most determined. Truth is found most often in the silence, in the quiet places.

There is no pattern the human mind can devise that does not exist already within the bounds of nature...Everything we do, see, write, notate, all are an echo of the deep seams of the universe. Music is the invisible world made visible through sound.