Sara Sheridan Quotes - Page 4

Kindness was too painful. It had been a long time since he had had to endure it.
Sara Sheridan
At length, when I considered it, I realized that the best of my actions were small things. Picking flowers and cooking food for my mother when she had been unwell, spending an afternoon with the children, sending money to my sister or kissing Henry’s tiny head as he slept in the nursery before I left. I thought of every detail and afterwards I felt better. Hellfire and brimstone have never appealed to me and I admit I become easily confused thinking of right and wrong. But I do understand kindness.
Sara Sheridan
I'm in my 40s and I'm constantly surprised by how much my childhood still plays a part in my life.
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
Didn’t young people care what the generation before them had achieved? And if not, why had everyone gone through those grim difficult wartime years?
Sara Sheridan
It was nearly ten years since the peace though her memories of the war still felt fresh.
Sara Sheridan
Most fellas like the races, though, Miss. It’s only human nature
Sara Sheridan
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
The curve of my waist in a tight fitting summer dress can really make me new friends.
Sara Sheridan
Like good reading skills, good writing skills require immersion and imaginative engagement.
Sara Sheridan
Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer's job.
Sara Sheridan
A paucity of material can open up just as many possibilities.
Sara Sheridan
I spend a lot of time imagining things - in fact, you could say that imagining things is my job.
Sara Sheridan
Vesta was so good with paperwork – you could hand her a file of drab, seemingly dull information and she’d construct a story from it worthy of a novel.
Sara Sheridan
I pride myself on making my own decisions, sir," she said. "I do not welcome gentlemen making them for me.
Sara Sheridan
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
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
You can’t trust anyone you have to pay, and really, they can’t trust you.
Sara Sheridan
We can learn so much looking outside our core field of expertise.
Sara Sheridan
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
A word out of place or an interesting choice of vocabulary can spawn a whole character.
Sara Sheridan
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
Edinburgh is alive with words.
Sara Sheridan
A writer is like a stick of rock - the words go right through.
Sara Sheridan
Molly Bloom is simply the most sensuous woman in literature.
Sara Sheridan
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
I can't bear literary snobbery.
Sara Sheridan
A vision of the little house in Soho flickered across his mind’s eye, his mother at a desk, writing in her journal, with hazy sunlight streaming through the morning windows. The woman inhabited a world he had once thought his own – a world of publishers and reliable suppliers. A London that was confident and competent amid its grey, puddle-strewn streets.
Sara Sheridan
In wartime people took action because of what they believed in. In peacetime people were driven by their private concerns.
Sara Sheridan
I think that everyone has something that they will kill for.
Sara Sheridan
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
Our archives are treasure troves - a testament to many lives lived and the complexity of the way we move forward. They contain clues to the real concerns of day-to-day life that bring the past alive.
Sara Sheridan
They march into the future to the rhythm of the past.
Sara Sheridan
You have no future when the past rules you.
Sara Sheridan
You couldn’t predict what was going to happen for one simple reason: people.
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
The net has provided a level playing field for criticism and comment - anyone and everyone is entitled to their opinion - and that is one of its greatest strengths.
Sara Sheridan
An important part of deciding where we want to go, as a society and culture, is knowing where we have come from, and indeed, how far we have come.
Sara Sheridan
As a novelist it is my job to tell stories that inspire and entertain but I am increasingly mindful that many of these historical tales (which of themselves are fascinating) relate directly to our issues in society today.
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
Often we don't notice the stringent rules to which our culture subjects us.
Sara Sheridan
I believe the era of the militant lady is back.
Sara Sheridan
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
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
In the 1950s at least less was expected of women. Now we're supposed to build a career, build a home, be the supermum that every child deserves, the perfect wife, meet the demands of elderly parents, and still stay sane.
Sara Sheridan
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
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
Today women have the rights and equality our Victorian sisters could only dream of, and with those privileges comes the responsibility of standing up and being counted.
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
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
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
Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction.
Sara Sheridan
The best historical stories capture the modern imagination because they are, in many senses, still current - part of a continuum.
Sara Sheridan
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
Books have a vital place in our culture. They are the source of ideas, of stories that engage and stretch the imagination and most importantly, inspire.
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
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
Writing historical fiction has many common traits with writing sci-fi or fantasy books. The past is another country - a very different world - and historical readers want to see, smell and touch what it was like living there.
Sara Sheridan
I've always felt that good writing does not have to be literary.
Sara Sheridan
I know a lot of writers, and everyone works differently, but this is something that we truly have in common across all genres - the fiction has to be real inside your head.
Sara Sheridan