Gerry Byrne Quotations

We are pleased that we have engaged the American reader in the voting process for a significant book award, We're delighted with the outstanding works of the well-regarded nominees--authors who we were proud to honor here tonight. We look forward to growing the Quills in the years to come.

For the record, this is a poor decision.

For this caucus to allow a rural infrastructure program to be announced in St. John's is, quite frankly, ridiculous,

Most of the other awards, quite honestly, they're more inside the industry, ... This is meant to reach out and touch the consumers.

We want to use television in a way that will provide a different understanding of the value of books and authors and hopefully ignite general interest in reading more.

We weren't expecting a grand slam home run the first time around. We wanted a solid, line-drive single and that's what we got.

It's an opportunity to create something over time that would potentially make a big difference to books, literacy, and reading.

The difference between this award and any other is that it's a reader's choice. People holler about other awards because they are committee-selected. This is not committee-selected. There are purists in literary circles who have a different sense of what is going on here, but we think anything you can do to get people reading is a good thing.