I don't think if you're serious about literature your library is filled with award-winning books.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I have a real soft spot in my heart for librarians and people who care about books.
I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.
There are people out there who genuinely love literature, who genuinely love to read and read widely, who will never like, or even necessarily get, my books. That was a hard one to swallow, to not feel slighted by.
Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
Great, big, serious novels always get awards. If it's a battle between a great, big, serious novel and a funny novel, the funny novel is doomed.
I think, to give our bookshelf a little credit, our area of the library and the bookstore has attracted stronger writers as it's started to thrive.
A library book, I imagine, is a happy book.
I think the greatest reward you get as a writer is finding that people who are reasonably receptive and intelligent have liked your book.
What's important to me is that all of my books are in print - and, in a way, that becomes the challenge, not winning this prize or getting that review. It's that the work is there, and you can walk into many bookshops throughout the world and buy it.