Sara Sheridan Quotes - Page 2

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
Sometimes a person’s first assumption was very telling. It revealed how they perceived the situation.
Sara Sheridan
People see what they expect to see.
Sara Sheridan
New technologies and resources offer exciting opportunities. They democratise access to information.
Sara Sheridan
The sky was a sparkling succession of black diamonds on black velvet made crystal clear by the blackout.
Sara Sheridan
In crime books it's possible to chart forensic technology by how well it has to be explained to a reader. In mid-Victorian crime novels fingerprinting has to be explained because it's new. Nowadays it's part of our world and we can simply assume that knowledge if we write about it.
Sara Sheridan
Google maps are one thing but there's no substitute for pounding the beat and I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to break into the back of the houses on Belgrave Place. Once I even for followed by a suspicious householder - I'd been hanging around staring at the exterior of his flat for too long.
Sara Sheridan
In the middle section of the book Mirabelle breaks into not one, but two houses near Belgravia Books. I had fun scoping these out - checking which windows looked least secure and figuring out how to scale the mews houses to the rear to get her inside. A man came out at one point, 'What are you doing?' he questioned me. 'The thing is, I'm writing a book,' I started with a smile. He waved me off, his hand as wide as a tennis racket. 'Everyone is writing a book, my dear,' he said. Between you and I, it's his house that MIrabelle ends up breaking into.
Sara Sheridan
A chap’s impending death has a way of focusing the mind.
Sara Sheridan
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
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.
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
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
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.
Sara Sheridan
As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective.
Sara Sheridan
The space where I write is in my head, I suppose.
Sara Sheridan
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
When a chap is passionate, the readership can sense it.
Sara Sheridan
Being a writer is a more difficult job than people imagine.
Sara Sheridan
I realised early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job.
Sara Sheridan
Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist.
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
Researching books gets you into nothing but trouble.
Sara Sheridan
Sometimes I create a character from a scrap - a mere mention that has been left behind.
Sara Sheridan
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.
Sara Sheridan
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
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
It's part of a writer's job to be nosy about everything.
Sara Sheridan
I love writing, and just as much, I love undertaking research.
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
For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists.
Sara Sheridan
Most people do a good deal of whatever they do motivated by love. For me, few stories are truly complete without it.
Sara Sheridan
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
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
I believe that being able to communicate directly with readers is a boon. I certainly enjoy it as much as they do.
Sara Sheridan
Writing about the 1950s has given me tremendous respect for my mother's generation.
Sara Sheridan
We have more choice than ever before about where and how we buy and read books.
Sara Sheridan
We are home to each other now.
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
In wartime, she thought to herself, you don’t call a death murder.
Sara Sheridan
I've always been attracted to stories about rebels - things that are unusual and sometimes dangerous.
Sara Sheridan
History is full of blank spaces, but good stories, invariably, are not.
Sara Sheridan
I love stories that suck you in, that you can't stop reading because you are quite simply there.
Sara Sheridan
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
On Twitter, people who had read my book followed me and I could see what else they were reading, why they'd liked what I'd written and by the by, more about them than I'd ever elicit from two minutes in a tent at a book festival, stuck behind a signing desk.
Sara Sheridan
It may take a village to raise a baby, but hell! it takes an army to produce a book.
Sara Sheridan
It's entirely possible to base an entire book on a long-forgotten letter.
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
She was herself in their company but a very specific version of herself.
Sara Sheridan
It took a certain kind of person to come from luxury and seek out danger.
Sara Sheridan
The telling of any character is what they do in a different situation.
Sara Sheridan
You became the sum total of where you lived, where you shopped, which church you went to, how many kids you had and which taxi company you used, and you only associated with people who had the same responses on their list.
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
Food in wartime Britain, she had to admit, was hardly inspiring.
Sara Sheridan
He often came back ‘all thinky’ from work.
Sara Sheridan
Only a man with nothing to hide could make that kind of racket.
Sara Sheridan
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
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
As it stands there is a very strong argument that as the book trade becomes increasingly corporate it's our literary heritage that is at risk - a vital part of our culture.
Sara Sheridan
It is one of the benchmarks of a culture I always think – the page at which it operates. A good way to measure it is to order a taxi and see how irate local people get if it is late.
Sara Sheridan