Now available as part of the Oxford Paperback Reference series, this new expanded edition of Peter Kemp's acclaimed collection illuminates the world of the writer, from classical literature to crime fiction and from the quill to the PC. Organized by subject, it includes topics ranging fromTools of the Trade and Writer's Block to Ghost Stories and Critics. Shakespeare, Shaw, and Johnson have their say, but authors also include Alice Munro on Illustration and Pushkin on Earning a Living, A. D. Hope on Fables and Fairytales, Rimbaud on Baudelaire and Harold Pinter on Omission. Newthemes in this edition include Graffiti and Epitaphs, and there are many more quotations by writers on other writers: Ben Okri on Cervantes, Walter de la Mare on Lewis Carroll, and Philip Roth on William Faulkner.The long uphill struggle in playwriting is getting to the top of page one. - Tom StoppardI'd love to write a book a year, but I don't think I'd have any fans. - Donna TarttLads don't write novels. They're down the pub. - Martin Amis on LadlitYou reach an age when every sentence you write bumps into one you wrote thirty years ago. - John UpdikeReading . . . is a strenuous and pleasurable contact sport. - Maureen HowardThere were no innocent blondes in crime fiction. - Ed McBainNever make your publisher pay the postage is the first rule of literary life. - Julian Barnes