I always have a quote for everything - it saves original thinking
The long uphill struggle in playwriting is getting to the top of page one
I've always thought people write because they are not living properly
Lads don't write novels. They're down the pub
I've mostly written about sex by means of the space break
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by
Just you try doing your VAT return with a head full of goblins
Peter Kemp's highly acclaimed collection of literary quotations is brought up to date with this new expanded edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations, further illuminating the intriguing world of the writer.
The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations brings together well over 4000 quotations - almost 900 quotations have been added - from classical literature to crime fiction and from the quill to the PC. It has the ability to provoke thought, stir emotion, excite the imagination, and give all sorts of different pleasure by means of words.
Including themes ranging from Tools of the Trade to Writer's Block, from Borrowing Books to Love, and Homer to Seamus Heaney, this new edition has additional themes: Solitude, Collaboration, Interruption, Illustration, Omission, Graffiti and, those ultimate literary pronouncements, Epitaphs.
Some of the latest quotations reflect recent developments in the literary world:
I am reliably informed that I have been responsible for 81 body-bags in and around Oxford, including three Heads of Colleges.
More quotations have turned up from remote areas and remote ages:
Clinic for the Soul
And some will court controversy:
Without my imprisonment, Mein Kampf would never have been written
Plus, with new insights from authors such as Melvyn Bragg, Michael Frayn, Shirley Hughes, Ian Rankin, Philip Pullman, and Zadie Smith, The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations will be an inspiring collection from the first to last word.
Peter Kemp is Fiction Editor of the Sunday Times.