Brewer's Famous Quotations

5000 quotations and the stories behind them

Nigel Rees

If you have ever wondered where the immortal phrase 'A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do' originated, tried to establish who first observed that 'Truth is stranger than fiction', been puzzled by rumours that Greta Garbo never said 'I want to be alone' and that Et tu Brute' were not Caesar's dying words, and rashly assumed that Salome's 'Dance of the Seven Veils' must be mentioned somewhere in the Bible - then Brewer's Famous Quotations is here to put you on the right track.

Authoritative and entertaining by turns, it is the perfect book for browsers, the ultimate source of information on a vast range of problematic quotations, and the final court of appeal on the vexed issue of Who Really Said What.