Quotes from Sara Sheridan

He didn't look as if he'd been through a whirlwind exactly but he'd certainly endured a stiff breeze.

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.

History at its best is a gritty, dirty business.

I am the Angel of Death to any kind of plant.

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

Playing on her femininity and making him feel uncomfortable seemed highly effective.

My fascination with history is as much about the present as it is about the past.

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.

People see what they expect to see.

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

Writers are a product of where we come from but by looking at alternatives to the culture in which we live, we can find ways to change and hopefully improve it.

Our business is communication oftentimes through the medium of stories but our capacity has a far greater scope - to entertain certainly, but also to stimulate debate, to mark up changes and differences and that way, to maybe, just now and then, to change the world.

In wartime people took action because of what they believed in. In peacetime people were driven by their private concerns.

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

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.

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.

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.

It's easy to laugh at etiquette, but in a hundred years, our children's grandchildren will almost certainly be laughing at us.

Scotland just isn't terribly Tory.

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

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.

I am incredibly jammy. I really am.

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.

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.