Top 100 Sara Sheridan Quotes
#1. One of Scotland's most important cultural exports - stories.
Sara Sheridan
#2. It's part of a writer's job to be nosy about everything.
Sara Sheridan
#3. The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured - we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.
Sara Sheridan
#4. It's entirely possible to base an entire book on a long-forgotten letter.
Sara Sheridan
#5. I'm a library user and I just don't hoard books. To me, they're for sharing.
Sara Sheridan
#6. It seemed to me that these months of watching and listening, second-guessing words and phrases, seeking so much that was new, had somehow changed me.
Sara Sheridan
#7. Looking at my life through the lens of history has made me increasingly grateful to standout women who pushed those boundaries to make the changes from which I have benefited.
Sara Sheridan
#8. It's not until you're older that you realise how important the things that happened to you when you were a kid are. Even things you only half remember.
Sara Sheridan
#9. There's nothing like a military man, even out of uniform.
Sara Sheridan
#10. Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.
Sara Sheridan
#11. The law don't like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble.
Sara Sheridan
#12. One of the great things about the Fifties is there are so many secrets - people who've come back from the war and done these terrible things that they don't want to think about, or can't say what they did because they signed the Official Secrets Act.
Sara Sheridan
#13. When you're depressed you retreat and you go into a smaller world. This is why Brighton worked well for the story, because it's a smaller world than London.
Sara Sheridan
#14. If you put Mirabelle into some of the situations she gets into, there is only one way Mirabelle can behave.
Sara Sheridan
#15. My father could talk about the Romany way of life and its culture. He could talk about freedom and the Scottish spirit. But that was all he could talk about. I was desperate for someone to talk to but there was just nobody there.
Sara Sheridan
#16. I was asked the other day in which era I would choose to live. As a historical novelist, it comes up sometimes. As a woman I'd have to say I'd like to live in the future - I want to see where these centuries of change are leading us.
Sara Sheridan
#18. I would rather be a spinster than sold off, traded in, whatever they may call it.
Sara Sheridan
#19. The curve of my waist in a tight fitting summer dress can really make me new friends.
Sara Sheridan
#20. I'm accustomed to reading Georgian and Victorian letters and sometimes you simply know in your gut that a blithe sentence is covering up a deeper emotion.
Sara Sheridan
#21. When the first book out my sister-in-law read it and we were chatting at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and she said, "Oh my God, chapter six, sex and a murder," and her five year old wandered into the kitchen and said, "Sixty hamburgers?
Sara Sheridan
#22. Writers of novels live in a strange world where what's made up is as important as what's real.
Sara Sheridan
#23. Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer's job.
Sara Sheridan
#24. There were so many wrongs piling up on both sides, so much of the past being dragged into the present, that living there was like carving the story of your life on to a sepulchral monument.
Sara Sheridan
#25. When you fake emotion for a living, when you make your money providing fantasies for other people, tuning into their worlds and indulging them, you don't invite someone into your world very easily.
Sara Sheridan
#26. There is something particularly fascinating about seeing places you know in a piece of art - be that in a film, or a photograph, or a painting.
Sara Sheridan
#27. Some women will do anything for a glass of champagne and a safe bed.
Sara Sheridan
#28. While I'm frustrated at the amount I'm expected to take on in the present, the 1950s woman was frustrated by being excluded - not being allowed to take things on at all.
Sara Sheridan
#29. Writers are, as a profession, nothing if not eccentric.
Sara Sheridan
#30. History makes my mouth water - and that is as much because of the voids in what documentation remains as what is set in stone.
Sara Sheridan
#31. Writers have a well-deserved reputation for being eccentric. Everything you've heard is true.
Sara Sheridan
#33. As an historical novelist - there are few jobs more retrospective. I dumped science at an early age.
Sara Sheridan
#34. Having instant feedback on twitter to research material I'm considering is an enormous help.
Sara Sheridan
#35. What used to be edgy (divorces) has become mainstream and what used to be mainstream (racism and sexism) has become shocking.
Sara Sheridan
#36. It was nearly ten years since the peace though her memories of the war still felt fresh.
Sara Sheridan
#37. We are in the middle of the biggest revolution in reading and writing since the advent of the Gutenberg press.
Sara Sheridan
#38. We can learn so much looking outside our core field of expertise.
Sara Sheridan
#39. Some matters are simply contentious. Sometimes you're never going to get it right.
Sara Sheridan
#40. People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.
Sara Sheridan
#41. I'm not sure how much easier it is for a mother to balance her life now - have we simply swapped one set of restrictions for another?
Sara Sheridan
#42. When a chap is passionate, the readership can sense it.
Sara Sheridan
#43. If we don't value the people who inspire us (and money is one mark of that) then what kind of culture are we building?
Sara Sheridan
#44. People were consuming on average less calories after the war than during the war. Things were still very tough. If you look at the film footage of London streets, even in areas which weren't slums, there are kids in the streets who are dirty and have no shoes on. It was rough. There was a real edge.
Sara Sheridan
#45. I love stories that suck you in, that you can't stop reading because you are quite simply there.
Sara Sheridan
#46. I had never really understood what an adventure life could be, if you followed your heart and did what you really wanted to do, which is what we must all do in the end.
Sara Sheridan
#47. The mass communications that could enable our politics for good have instead turned it into a bland conglomeration of stinted opinion cloaked in the occasional media frenzy of blame or denial.
Sara Sheridan
#48. Researching books gets you into nothing but trouble.
Sara Sheridan
#51. Writing is a profession that has no real career structure and your best advice when you hit a difficulty is probably going to come from another writer one or two rungs on the career ladder ahead of you.
Sara Sheridan
#52. The 1950s is a key decade in the 20th Century. Each year has a distinctive flavour.
Sara Sheridan
#53. I've always felt that good writing does not have to be literary.
Sara Sheridan
#54. Living in Edinburgh, I consider myself particularly lucky - we have the biggest book festival in the world, a plethora of fascinating libraries and museums, and some of the greatest architecture in Europe.
Sara Sheridan
#56. Being a writer is a more difficult job than people imagine.
Sara Sheridan
#57. Readers are so much more important than well, just about everything.
Sara Sheridan
#58. A writer is like a stick of rock - the words go right through.
Sara Sheridan
#59. I always thought that bagels and lox was my soul food, but it turns out it's sushi.
Sara Sheridan
#61. A book is a story, even if it's non-fiction, and once I've read it, I have the story with me inside my head always.
Sara Sheridan
#62. This investigation felt difficult, like driving in fog.
Sara Sheridan
#64. If I hadn't been able to get my first book published, I am not sure what I would have done.
Sara Sheridan
#65. For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists.
Sara Sheridan
#66. Bookshops are at the coalface of our industry.
Sara Sheridan
#67. The smell of roasting meat rose from the street stalls in a sizzle and a fiddle player begged for coin as he rasped a haunting melody. Life could not be more perfect.
Sara Sheridan
#68. Only a man with nothing to hide could make that kind of racket.
Sara Sheridan
#69. Writing about the 1950s has given me tremendous respect for my mother's generation.
Sara Sheridan
#70. You can't trust anyone you have to pay, and really, they can't trust you.
Sara Sheridan
#71. What was it that marked me as a woman and was I prepared to let it go?
Sara Sheridan
#72. He tasted of whisky and his skin was rough where he hadn't shaved, but Mirabelle kissed him back.
Sara Sheridan
#73. Whereas Mirabelle is tall, thin and sad, Vesta is physically and emotionally her opposite.
Sara Sheridan
#74. He cannot think. He can scarcely breathe. But he has no desire to either, he simply wants to keep kissing her.
Sara Sheridan
#75. I am torn between the freedom of this adventure and the benefits of civilization despite its constraints.
Sara Sheridan
#76. I find it inspiring to actively choose which traditions to celebrate and also come up with new ideas for traditions of my own.
Sara Sheridan
#77. Wellsted will remember this moment for the rest of his life. It is the first time he desires something for himself that is not dedicated to his own advancement. It is the moment he falls in love.
Sara Sheridan
#78. If there's one shade a woman of colour can't wear it's got to be the one everyone expects, hasn't it?
Sara Sheridan
#79. Like good reading skills, good writing skills require immersion and imaginative engagement.
Sara Sheridan
#80. The Best of Elvis Presley, Doris Day, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Hailey and the Comets, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Frankie Laine all topped the charts in the '50s. Load a playlist of rock n' roll royalty. You're spoilt for choice.
Sara Sheridan
#81. Without archives many stories of real people would be lost, and along with those stories, vital clues that allow us to reflect and interpret our lives today.
Sara Sheridan
#82. I wanted to find something I could do at home. I sat down with a friend and made a list of all the things I could try, and one of them was writing a novel.
Sara Sheridan
#83. Everyone assumes writers spend their time lounging around, writing and occasionally striking a pose whilst having a think.
Sara Sheridan
#85. I am completely unflustered by whichever medium people choose to read my words. I'm just delighted they're reading them at all!
Sara Sheridan
#86. I knew that I was talented. I was positive about that. I wasn't sure exactly what I was talented at, but I was ambitious enough to wait it out and see what turned up.
Sara Sheridan
#87. My fascination with history is as much about the present as it is about the past.
Sara Sheridan
#88. Once you're on the pleasure express, it's hard to get off and switch to another, slower service.
Sara Sheridan
#89. Such a night cannot be shaken from a woman's memory. Such a night changes your life forever.
Sara Sheridan
#91. I jealously guard my research time and I love fully immersing myself in those dusty old books and papers. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.
Sara Sheridan
#92. Often we don't notice the stringent rules to which our culture subjects us.
Sara Sheridan
#93. Social and cultural history is often comprised of whatever diaries and letters remain and that is down to chance and wide open to interpretation.
Sara Sheridan
#94. Our children make us so vulnerable. Our parents too, I suppose.
Sara Sheridan
#95. I believe that being able to communicate directly with readers is a boon. I certainly enjoy it as much as they do.
Sara Sheridan
#96. There was something unbearable about the damp, dark earth closing over a coffin and the still, empty flesh that was inside. She had attended a hundred funerals, but when you really loved someone there was something too final about a burial. Something brutal.
Sara Sheridan
#97. Aunts offer kids an opportunity to try out ideas that don't chime with their parents and they also demonstrate that people can get on, love each other and live together without necessarily being carbon copies.
Sara Sheridan
#98. Historical fiction of course is particularly research-heavy. The details of everyday life are there to trip you up. Things that we take for granted, indeed, hardly think about, can lead to tremendous mistakes.
Sara Sheridan
#99. Being able to read well in public and talk about your work in an engaging fashion is part of most writers' job specification.
Sara Sheridan
#100. New technologies and resources offer exciting opportunities. They democratise access to information.
Sara Sheridan
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