This made me laugh, from Meg Wolitzer’s novel The Wife:
All of them, the novelists, the story writers, the poets, desperately long to win. If there is a prize, then there is someone somewhere on earth who desires it. Grown men pace their homes and scheme about ways to win things, and small children hyperventilate over the prospect of gold-plated trophies for penmanship, for swimming, for just being cheerful. Maybe other life-forms give out awards too, and we just don’t know it: Best All-Round Flatworm; Most Helpful Crow.
Virginia Rounding: Author/editor/proofreader 