Sara Sheridan Quotes

I found out pretty quickly that there is a lot of money to be made if you can become the kind of woman who doesn't look like the kind of woman she is. ~ Sara Sheridan

The digital revolution has wrest a little control away from corporate publishers and white, male, middle-aged critics, but the financial value put on the job of the writer and the misconceptions around that make it extremely difficult to enter the profession. ~ Sara Sheridan

You don't know what the hell you look like when you're just some little schoolgirl. ~ Sara Sheridan

Escapers were the cream of the crop. ~ Sara Sheridan

I believe the era of the militant lady is back. ~ Sara Sheridan

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

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

Parts of my 20s and 30s have gone by in a flash but my childhood is with me all the time. ~ Sara Sheridan

My identity has always been confused. Born in Edinburgh of a Scottish/Russian/Jewish mother and an English/Irish/Catholic father, there is no form of guilt to which I was not subjected in my childhood. Members of my immediate family live all over the world - a diaspora of cousins, aunts, uncles and more in a dizzying mix. ~ Sara Sheridan

Writing is such a solitary occupation that it takes a long time to build up a group of professional peers with whom you genuinely identify. ~ Sara Sheridan

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

There are as many different kinds of books as there are writers - as many different responses as there are readers. ~ Sara Sheridan

She picked up the stout and took a sip. It slid down her throat like silk. ~ Sara Sheridan

Nothing is long ago in an archive, my dear. In the records we treat the dead as same as the living.
that's the whole point of keeping papers. It doesn't matter if it's a hundred years or only a few weeks. It's all filed away, fresh as the day it went under the covers. ~ Sara Sheridan

Mirabelle was always an enigma, and he had the sense that if he pushed her, she'd bolt. ~ Sara Sheridan

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

For me, writing stories set, well, wherever they're best set, is a form of cultural curiosity that is uniquely Scottish - we're famous for travelling in search of adventure. ~ Sara Sheridan

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

You spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before I was really good at the spilling beans section, but the new skill I had to learn when I was writing Brighton Belle was difficult. I had to avoid the equivalent of shouting, this character's a murderer! Look who did it!. ~ Sara Sheridan

It is through our extended family that we first learn to compromise and come to an understanding that even if we don't always agree about things we can still love and look out for each other. ~ Sara Sheridan

I was fired ignominiously from the Junior School Choir for being so off tune that the choir mistress declared she couldn't even bear to have me mime. ~ Sara Sheridan

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

When you sit at the back of a room you can keep a check on everything. ~ Sara Sheridan

I am incredibly jammy. I really am. ~ Sara Sheridan

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

It's ridiculous – a girl steps out, goes dancing, gets her hair cut, decides to spend the summer in Italy and it's a scandal. A chap does it and no one bats an eyelid. ~ Sara Sheridan

I spend a lot of time imagining things - in fact, you could say that imagining things is my job. ~ Sara Sheridan

I love writing, and just as much, I love undertaking research. ~ Sara Sheridan

The smog curled between the streetlamps and the spokes of the wrought iron framework. It seemed through your body and into your bones. ~ Sara Sheridan

There was something indomitable about Maria – like Britannia. He'd heard that she kept her head during a Chilean earthquake the year before when men of greater age and experience had panicked. Afterwards she was discovered calmly taking notes, recording the way the land hand risen, for publication, she said. ~ Sara Sheridan

Such a night cannot be shaken from a woman's memory. Such a night changes your life forever. ~ Sara Sheridan

I have an ambivalent relationship with Margaret Thatcher. She came to power in May 1979 - a month before my 11th birthday. I was far too young to have developed a great deal of political awareness. I remember it, though - my mother excited at the dinner table because Britain had its first female prime minister. ~ Sara Sheridan

Everyone was important during the war. Everyone. We worked together and we won. ~ Sara Sheridan

History is full of blank spaces, but good stories, invariably, are not. ~ Sara Sheridan

History was my favourite subject at school and in my spare time I read historical novels voraciously from Heidi to the Scarlet Pimpernel and from Georgette Heyer to Agatha Christie. ~ Sara Sheridan

I once did an event with Ian Rankin where he said he didn't really need to do much background research because his books are set in the present, and I just thought: 'You lucky, lucky beast!' because as a historical novelist, I live constantly on the edge of wondering whether tissues had been invented. ~ Sara Sheridan

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

This investigation felt difficult, like driving in fog. ~ Sara Sheridan

In wartime, she thought to herself, you don't call a death murder. ~ Sara Sheridan

It may take a village to raise a baby, but hell! it takes an army to produce a book. ~ Sara Sheridan

I'm grateful that I've enjoyed the support of libraries, bookshops and institutional funders. ~ Sara Sheridan

While what I write is always largely consistent with the records that remain I freely admit that where historical fact proves a barrier to invention, I simply move a detail a little one way or another. ~ Sara Sheridan

I can't bear literary snobbery. ~ Sara Sheridan

I've never seen an 'English' books section in, well, an English bookshop, but in Scotland, most bookshops have a set of shelves dedicated to Scottish authors. ~ Sara Sheridan

Those who have not been stung will hardly fear a bee the same as those who have. ~ Sara Sheridan

There's nothing like a military man, even out of uniform. ~ Sara Sheridan

The jungle is alive. It's dangerous as a living nightmare and brimful of hostility. ~ Sara Sheridan

I'm proud of the culture I come from - we're a small country and a close-knit community. ~ Sara Sheridan

Crime writers, I've noticed, can be jumpy. They live in a world where there are murderers on the loose and they haven't been caught yet! ~ Sara Sheridan

I've been obsessed with stories since I was a kid so it's no surprise that I ended up writing for a living. ~ Sara Sheridan

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

I like you in green,' he said. 'You look as if you're a very beautiful imp.' ~ Sara Sheridan

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

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

When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie's crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time. ~ Sara Sheridan

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

Parisians were not easy to engage in conversation. Perhaps that was why the Resistance had been so successful. ~ Sara Sheridan

You couldn't predict what was going to happen for one simple reason: people. ~ Sara Sheridan

Jack had been the love of her life and he was gone. It seemed now that there had never been bad times, though she knew that wasn't true. ~ Sara Sheridan

In the doorway of Fortnum & Mason a young couple were kissing, oblivious to the world. The neon signs mounted on the buildings cast a glossy veneer over the streetscape, glowing through the smog. Around the statue of Eros there were crowds of youngers. The girls were a mass of bobby pins and ribbons, hardly dressed for the cold weather. The boys wore suits with thin ties. They were bantering on their way from the cinemas and theatres to the bars, dance halls and music clubs further along.
"I fancy you, Kitty Dawson," a lone boy shouted. ~ Sara Sheridan

How lucky am I? Quite often I speak at book festivals, and people ask me how I got published. There's people who have been working on a book for as long as ten years, and I feel like such a cow. ~ Sara Sheridan

Personally I estimate about a third of my time is spent on author events, social media and traditional publicity. ~ Sara Sheridan

For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists. ~ Sara Sheridan

I write fast. I'm one of the lucky ones. ~ Sara Sheridan

I'm unique - a cosmopolitan mix. ~ Sara Sheridan

He's more a shape in a drape than a hep cat ~ Sara Sheridan

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

A journey is an achievement, Maria, just as much as a mathematical proof. ~ Sara Sheridan

I decided to coin the term 'cosy crime noir' for Brighton Belle. That is 'cosy crime' for today's sensibilities because there is that slightly edgy element to it. ~ Sara Sheridan

Change occurs slowly. Very often a legal change might take place but the cultural shift required to really accept its spirit lingers in the wings for decades. ~ Sara Sheridan

Small details are a vital part of allowing a reader to make an imaginative connection with long dead historical figures. ~ Sara Sheridan

I don't choose between my house phone and my mobile. I don't choose between my laptop and my notebook. And I don't intend to choose between my e-reader and my bookshelf. ~ Sara Sheridan

I'm a library user and I just don't hoard books. To me, they're for sharing. ~ Sara Sheridan

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

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

The moon was low but not full. The men set out along the dock in conversation. As they dropped onto the dark beach, Simmons declared, 'There can be no better place in the world than this.'

Henderson had to agree. The beach was beautiful. The stars lit the sand and balmy air rode in as the waves washed up on paradise ~ Sara Sheridan

Why, that means you're just a ... busybody. You could be anyone. You could be a journalist.' ~ Sara Sheridan

What used to be edgy (divorces) has become mainstream and what used to be mainstream (racism and sexism) has become shocking. ~ Sara Sheridan

It's part of a writer's job to be nosy about everything. ~ Sara Sheridan

At the end of the day, that's what a family is - a group of different people who accept each other. ~ Sara Sheridan

I didn't want to give up my job and join the ranks of the Doing Fuck All brigade no matter how much money I had in the bank. ~ Sara Sheridan

Readers are so much more important than well, just about everything. ~ Sara Sheridan

It's always been important for writers to be disciplined but now even more so. In addition to the traditional displacement activities like cleaning the fridge or eating cake writers are faced with a plethora of online possibilities (some of which may be professionally worthwhile as well as interesting and fun). As a writer it's important to learn how to focus so you can do both as and when you need to. ~ Sara Sheridan

What was it that marked me as a woman and was I prepared to let it go? ~ Sara Sheridan

She enjoyed the sights and sounds of the dockside – ports were places of freedom. ~ Sara Sheridan

The telling of any character is what they do in a different situation. ~ Sara Sheridan

The world loves the 1950s. ~ Sara Sheridan

Britain wouldn't have won the war without its eccentric geniuses. ~ Sara Sheridan

I'm a professional writer and I consider it part of my job to publicise my work and these days part of that job is done online. ~ Sara Sheridan

Musicians are the worst – they're charming if you're lucky but they ain't steady. ~ Sara Sheridan

Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction. ~ Sara Sheridan

I've always viewed history as my personal treasure chest. ~ Sara Sheridan

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

An aunt is a safe haven for a child. Someone who will keep your secrets and is always on your side. ~ Sara Sheridan

I realized early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job. Because there are no pay grades and very little structure, people make interesting assumptions about the profession. ~ Sara Sheridan

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

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

There are so many ways to do research - even watching old Ealing comedies, watching people getting on and off buses in London, looking at household interiors. ~ Sara Sheridan

Women the world over suffer restrictions. ~ Sara Sheridan

Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer's job. ~ Sara Sheridan