Sara Sheridan Quotes - Page 2

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

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.

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

The hard fact is that writing is available to readers because of market factors as much as particular writing talent.

Most fellas like the races, though, Miss. It’s only human nature

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?

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

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.

I have a very strong sense that we only know where we are by looking clearly at where we've come from.

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

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.

Writers of novels live in a strange world where what's made up is as important as what's real.

I love stories that suck you in, that you can't stop reading because you are quite simply there.

Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction.

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

In wartime, she thought to herself, you don’t call a death murder.

He cannot think. He can scarcely breathe. But he has no desire to either, he simply wants to keep kissing her.

We are living in glorious days where each readers' voice can be heard.

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.

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

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.

Kindness was too painful. It had been a long time since he had had to endure it.

Sometimes life isn’t what we want, it’s what we get.

The library is a symbol of freedom.

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.

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

One of my favourite parts of writing is doing the research. It's the door into that magical reading/writing state - the raw material for making the story real.

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.

The fifties is a decade when every year is markedly different from the one before and after. That doesn't happen every decade. 1983 isn't that much different from 1986. But 1953 is very different from 1956.

Food in wartime Britain, she had to admit, was hardly inspiring.

You can’t trust anyone you have to pay, and really, they can’t trust you.

I find it inspiring to actively choose which traditions to celebrate and also come up with new ideas for traditions of my own.

I am torn between the freedom of this adventure and the benefits of civilization despite its constraints.

Her eyes betrayed no shock at the sights of the quay as they unfolded – not the sweating deckhands, the prostitutes crowding the ship, the hubbub of stalls, including one where three slaves were for sale, their ankles manacled. She might as well have been walking through a country garden as she moved inexorably away from the water.

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

A writer is like a stick of rock - the words go right through.

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.

There was something about Maria Graham that you could believe in – a slice of home. If not unique in her travelling, she was at least extraordinary.

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.

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

Edinburgh is a great big black bastard of a city where there are ghosts of all kinds.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

I had loved poetry and the theatre. Now I loved adventure more.

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.

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

The world is changing and you’re only just becoming accustomed to it. You’re changing, I suppose. You’ve changed since I’ve known you.’‘How?’‘You’ve come more alive.

Mirabelle was always an enigma, and he had the sense that if he pushed her, she’d bolt.

You couldn’t predict what was going to happen for one simple reason: people.

No one's book is perfect.

They march into the future to the rhythm of the past.

We are in the middle of the biggest revolution in reading and writing since the advent of the Gutenberg press.

It had occurred to her many times that on board it didn’t matter where you were coming from or where you were heading. Each voyage had its own charisma. Like writing a book – word by word – or crossing a country – step by step – each minute had to be lived moment by moment.

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.

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

We had laid down the law : no chocolate, no sex.

It occurred to me that as a man I could do anything, everything I wanted.