Top 100 Sara Sheridan Quotes
#1. 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
#2. I would rather be a spinster than sold off, traded in, whatever they may call it.
Sara Sheridan
#3. I've always viewed history as my personal treasure chest.
Sara Sheridan
#4. I have a very strong sense that we only know where we are by looking clearly at where we've come from.
Sara Sheridan
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. People are so different in wartime. No one gets to be ordinary. Not really.
Sara Sheridan
#9. Archive material is a fabulous starting point - individual documents are like signposted roads, heading to a variety of intriguing possibilities.
Sara Sheridan
#10. To me, reading through old letters and journals is like treasure hunting. Somewhere in those faded, handwritten lines there is a story that has been packed away in a dusty old box for years.
Sara Sheridan
#11. Mirabelle sat down, dropping into the cushions like a ball being caught in a large leather glove.
Sara Sheridan
#12. When she first moved to Brighton, the flat on the Lawns had felt luxurious and it had seemed as if she was settling down, sleeping in the same bed every night, the darkness uninterrupted by any hint of emergency. It had felt as if all her difficulties were over.
Sara Sheridan
#13. If you put Mirabelle into some of the situations she gets into, there is only one way Mirabelle can behave.
Sara Sheridan
#14. The jungle is alive. It's dangerous as a living nightmare and brimful of hostility.
Sara Sheridan
#15. I've found myself moved by letters and diaries in archives as well as trashy, summer blockbusters. It's possible to make a connection with any kind of writing - as long as the writing is good.
Sara Sheridan
#16. You couldn't predict what was going to happen for one simple reason: people.
Sara Sheridan
#18. I spend some time every week in independent bookshops all over the country and what I see is inspiring!
Sara Sheridan
#19. A chap's impending death has a way of focusing the mind.
Sara Sheridan
#20. When you sit at the back of a room you can keep a check on everything.
Sara Sheridan
#22. 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
#23. Writers have it easy. If you write a bestseller or have your book made into a movie, you'll never have to work again, or so the myth goes.
Sara Sheridan
#24. A paucity of material can open up just as many possibilities.
Sara Sheridan
#25. The devil was always in the detail. And here the detail was certainly devilish.
Sara Sheridan
#26. Scottish writers are particularly successful in the crime genre.
Sara Sheridan
#27. Afternoon drinkers shifted in the gloom as if they sensed new blood.
Sara Sheridan
#28. I have a really vivid imagination and I find it difficult to read scenes of complete graphic violence. That's not to say that graphic violence does not exist. It's just that I find it quite harrowing and I much prefer if it isn't completely outlined for me because my imagination can do that.
Sara Sheridan
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. We are living in glorious days where each readers' voice can be heard.
Sara Sheridan
#33. Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer's job.
Sara Sheridan
#34. Scotland consistently produces world-class writers.
Sara Sheridan
#35. Like most little girls, I found the lure of grown-up accessories astonishing - lipstick, perfume, hats and gloves. When I write female characters in my historical novels, getting these details right is vital.
Sara Sheridan
#36. I'm very aware we are the first generation ever to have such incredible opportunities to express ourselves publicly to a worldwide audience.
Sara Sheridan
#37. You've got to make an effort to get the details right, because even through someone picks it up and knows it's a novel, they know someone's made it up and they know it's not real, if you make a small mistake they will cease to imaginatively engage with the story.
Sara Sheridan
#38. Those who have not been stung will hardly fear a bee the same as those who have.
Sara Sheridan
#39. The law don't like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble.
Sara Sheridan
#40. Writers of novels live in a strange world where what's made up is as important as what's real.
Sara Sheridan
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. All those kisses. There must have been a thousand. They engulfed me like some kind of all consuming dream where I became very alive and very relaxed at the same time.
Sara Sheridan
#44. People who inspire such contradictory emotions must be worthwhile, I reasoned.
Sara Sheridan
#45. On of the prerequisites for my mobile phone is that I have to be able to fling it at a wall if I lose my temper.
Sara Sheridan
#47. I'm a novelist by trade and my job is to write a story rather than reconstruct actual events.
Sara Sheridan
#48. I've always had a keen sense of history. My father was an antiques dealer and he used to bring home boxes full of treasures, and each item always had a tale attached.
Sara Sheridan
#49. As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective.
Sara Sheridan
#50. The curve of my waist in a tight fitting summer dress can really make me new friends.
Sara Sheridan
#51. The sky was a sparkling succession of black diamonds on black velvet made crystal clear by the blackout.
Sara Sheridan
#52. The telling of any character is what they do in a different situation.
Sara Sheridan
#53. Readership is highly dependent upon format and distribution as much as it is on content.
Sara Sheridan
#54. I'm a library user and I just don't hoard books. To me, they're for sharing.
Sara Sheridan
#55. It's entirely possible to base an entire book on a long-forgotten letter.
Sara Sheridan
#56. I'd never be where I am if more successful writers hadn't taken an interest in me and done me a good turn - be it chiming in with constructive criticism or giving me sound advice about my career plan.
Sara Sheridan
#57. The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured - we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.
Sara Sheridan
#58. It's part of a writer's job to be nosy about everything.
Sara Sheridan
#59. I care about a lot of issues. I care about libraries, I care about healthcare, I care about homelessness and unemployment. I care about net neutrality and the steady erosion of our liberties both online and off. I care about the rich/poor divide and the rise of corporate business.
Sara Sheridan
#60. I remember calling the council's cemetery department to ask about body decomposition in different soil types. Once they had verified that I was a novelist and not a sicko, they were extremely helpful.
Sara Sheridan
#61. The lively oral storytelling scene in Scots and Gaelic spills over into the majority English-speaking culture, imbuing it with a strong sense of narrative drive that is essential to the modern novel, screenplay and even non-fiction.
Sara Sheridan
#62. I have become very aware how under-represented are the stories of the underprivileged and undervalued. Our records are, in general, very male and if not always the material of the rich, certainly (for obvious reasons) the material of the literate.
Sara Sheridan
#63. It's easy to laugh at etiquette, but in a hundred years, our children's grandchildren will almost certainly be laughing at us.
Sara Sheridan
#64. I love writing, and just as much, I love undertaking research.
Sara Sheridan
#65. I didn't expect to love being online as much as I do. I've met some wonderful people and discovered that however arcane some of my interests that there are people out there who are interested too.
Sara Sheridan
#66. She curled sideways into the milky light of the bedside lamp and began to read.
Sara Sheridan
#67. Most fledgling and mid-list writers are lucky to be offered a 4-figure sum and are not only expected to deliver copy that needs minimal editing but also take an active part in marketing and publicizing their work.
Sara Sheridan
#68. One of Scotland's most important cultural exports - stories.
Sara Sheridan
#69. I said: 'I'm throwing in my job, and I'm going to write a book.' Everyone thought: 'She's off her trolley,' and it was quite crazy, really. I'm just lucky that it came off.
Sara Sheridan
#70. It occurred to me that as a man I could do anything, everything I wanted.
Sara Sheridan
#71. In wartime people took action because of what they believed in. In peacetime people were driven by their private concerns.
Sara Sheridan
#72. A journey is an achievement, Maria, just as much as a mathematical proof.
Sara Sheridan
#74. Molly Bloom is simply the most sensuous woman in literature.
Sara Sheridan
#75. Sometimes I create a character from a scrap - a mere mention that has been left behind.
Sara Sheridan
#76. As a historical novelist, there is very little I like more than spending time sorting through boxes of old letters, diaries, maps, trinkets, and baubles.
Sara Sheridan
#77. 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
#78. I have no problem in moving a date one way or another or coming up with a subplot that gets my characters in (or out) of a fix more rambunctiously than the extant records show.
Sara Sheridan
#79. Something I notice speaking to writers from south of Hadrian's Wall is that the culture is different. At base, I think Scotland values its creative industries differently from England.
Sara Sheridan
#80. There's nothing like a military man, even out of uniform.
Sara Sheridan
#81. I've always been attracted to stories about rebels - things that are unusual and sometimes dangerous.
Sara Sheridan
#83. It may take a village to raise a baby, but hell! it takes an army to produce a book.
Sara Sheridan
#84. If you've been hurt and you've grieved and you've been through the mill, it takes a long time to get over it.
Sara Sheridan
#85. Writers are a product of where we come from, but by looking at alternatives to the culture in which we live, we can find ways to change and hopefully improve it.
Sara Sheridan
#86. We might give her presents, tell some tales, but would she ever be able to really understand what the journey had been like for us?
Sara Sheridan
#87. Our business is communication oftentimes through the medium of stories but our capacity has a far greater scope - to entertain certainly, but also to stimulate debate, to mark up changes and differences and that way, to maybe, just now and then, to change the world.
Sara Sheridan
#88. 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
#89. Playing on her femininity and making him feel uncomfortable seemed highly effective.
Sara Sheridan
#90. You don't know what the hell you look like when you're just some little schoolgirl.
Sara Sheridan
#91. 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
#92. For a writer it's a genuinely interesting and hopefully profitable era that makes a variety of books available to a variety of readers, extending both what's available and who gets to read it.
Sara Sheridan
#93. 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
#94. The new contract between writers and readers is one I'm prepared to sign up to. I've met some fascinating people at events and online. Down with the isolation of writers I say! And long live Twitter.
Sara Sheridan
#95. This is the cusp of an age at least as exciting and as brimful of potential as the early days of the printing press.
Sara Sheridan
#96. Research material can turn up anywhere - in a dusty old letter in an archive, a journal or some old photographs you find in a charity shop.
Sara Sheridan
#97. My family spans many world religions, ethnicities and nationalities. The truth is that I don't have one identity. I'm Scottish, British, European, Humanist, Atheist and in part at least, culturally Jewish.
Sara Sheridan
#98. Most people do a good deal of whatever they do motivated by love. For me, few stories are truly complete without it.
Sara Sheridan
#99. It's interesting that, given our culture has so many words that refer to women in a truly derogatory fashion, it's 'lady' - a term that has conferred social respect on our gender for over a thousand years - that has women up in arms.
Sara Sheridan
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