“Forge your iron; shape it by force, / not into a flower you already know / but into what can also be a flower  / if you think it is and it is so.” ― João Cabral de Melo Neto, Education by Stone: Selected Poems (1992 Neustadt Prize Laureate)

“Kamau Brathwaite, a towering poet, has moved from the margins of language and history, from the peripheral realm of ”the other exiles,’ to the center of civilization, affecting a renaissance of oral poetry and remaking of the poetic world.” – H. H. Anniah Gowda on 1994 Neustadt Prize Laureate Kamau Brathwaite

“Nuruddin Farah questions all the oppressive stabilities, whether rooted in the family, the clan, the nation, or in the supranational claims of religion and political systems. He is a Somali writer, an African writer, an important voice in postcolonial modernism.” — Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o on 1998 Neustadt Prize Laureate Nuruddin Farah

“What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become.” ― David Malouf, An Imaginary Life, 2000 Neustadt Prize Laureate

“Awarding the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature to Adam Zagajewski, the most gifted poetic heir of Miłosz, is like passing on a baton, providing reassurance that Polish poetry is alive and doing well.”—Bogdana Carpenter on 2004 Neustadt Prize Laureate Adam Zagajewski

“She has been an indefatigable advocate for human rights throughout her life, and her work has made an impact around the world because she has unfailingly spoken up for justice and liberty . . . becoming a voice for the voiceless and the dispossessed.” — Daisy Zamora on 2006 Neustadt Prize Laureate Claribel Alegría.