Sara Sheridan Quotes

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.

History at its best is a gritty, dirty business.

Scotland just isn't terribly Tory.

Very often the characters people respond to best have little parts of reality they can relate to.

The law don't like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble.

New technologies and resources offer exciting opportunities. They democratise access to information.

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.

I'm very aware we are the first generation ever to have such incredible opportunities to express ourselves publicly to a worldwide audience.

I believe that being able to communicate directly with readers is a boon. I certainly enjoy it as much as they do.

Most people do a good deal of whatever they do motivated by love. For me, few stories are truly complete without it.

In the industry, trying out new genres is not always encouraged but what I've discovered is that as a writer, a jaunt outside my comfort zone generally brings new skills to the main body of my work.

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.

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

I love writing, and just as much, I love undertaking research.

The space where I write is in my head, I suppose.

We don't live in a society that has genuine equality, and every woman we know has experienced that.

When a chap is passionate, the readership can sense it.

Being a writer is a more difficult job than people imagine.

Reticence was clearly a national characteristic, even if the other person spoke French.

I realised early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job.

Mirabelle sat down, dropping into the cushions like a ball being caught in a large leather glove.

Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist.

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.

As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective.

Today is the anniversary of my husband’s death, " Maria announced. It was a dramatic statement, but the occasion seemed to demand it. "And I am going to leave.

Social and cultural history is often comprised of whatever diaries and letters remain and that is down to chance and wide open to interpretation.

They should be taking bonuses from bankers, not library books from schoolchildren. What kind of society are we building?

Archive material is a fabulous starting point - individual documents are like signposted roads, heading to a variety of intriguing possibilities.

He finds himself bored by the shenanigans of highly spirited young men. Their concerns reside somewhere between balder and dash.

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

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.

An eerie atmosphere leeched from the soot-damaged walls. It was as if the house had died, and yet she felt she belonged here. It was as if the old place wanted to claim her from the grave.

Escapers were the cream of the crop.

A chap’s impending death has a way of focusing the mind.

I wondered if that was what I was doing myself – caring so much about something that was so long gone that I was only propping it up.

People are so different in wartime. No one gets to be ordinary. Not really.

The devil was always in the detail. And here the detail was certainly devilish.

Once they have dedicated themselves to a cause, women will fight to the end for it.

Communism, ” I observed, “is a pile of wank.

No one's book is perfect.

If peace came it would have to do so when there had been time to allow the hatred to grow out of people’s thinking.

The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured - we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.

Having instant feedback on twitter to research material I'm considering is an enormous help.

If there’s one shade a woman of colour can’t wear it’s got to be the one everyone expects, hasn’t it?

Once you’re on the pleasure express, it’s hard to get off and switch to another, slower service.

Muscat is like a mind-altering drug. A stroll in its streets is like getting drunk for the first time

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.

She tried to focus on the element of riddle or at least puzzle contained in the letter and ignore the sense of doom that was sweeping through her like clouds rolling to the shore over open water.

During the war some of the country’s sharpest minds had looked as if they had been dragged through a hedge backwards.

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.