Quotes from Sara Sheridan

I'd never be where I am if more successful writers hadn't taken an interest in me and done me a good turn.

Those who have not been stung will hardly fear a bee the same as those who have.

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.

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.

Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer's job.

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

It was as if she was a dream, like London, which he could not entirely grasp and of which he was not worthy. He wanted to be part of it but had forgotten how. It seemed extraordinary and strange that this paragon among women had condescended to travel on his ship. In fact, she'd insisted upon it. Her presence was at once otherworldly and familiar, none of which explained why his brain ceased to function when he was in her company.

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

Being able to read well in public and talk about your work in an engaging fashion is part of most writers' job specification.

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.

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.

She curled sideways into the milky light of the bedside lamp and began to read.

I knew that I was talented. I was positive about that. I wasn't sure exactly what I was talented at, but I was ambitious enough to wait it out and see what turned up.

The friendship between officers is tarnished by the need for one or another to be promoted. The kindness of a captain is predicated on the obedience and efficiency of his underlings.

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.

You've got to make an effort to get the details right, because even through someone picks it up and knows it's a novel, they know someone's made it up and they know it's not real, if you make a small mistake they will cease to imaginatively engage with the story.

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

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.

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.

The daily chocolate left Will in high spirits, so that some days he believed he could wheel with the gulls that fished the foaming water close to shore. Now that he felt so free, it came to him that the corner of England, which up till now had been his whole universe, was in fact only a scrap of a boundless realm.

My father could talk about the Romany way of life and its culture. He could talk about freedom and the Scottish spirit. But that was all he could talk about. I was desperate for someone to talk to but there was just nobody there.

Molly Bloom is simply the most sensuous woman in literature.

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.

Always wise aunts come in many guises. There are maiden aunts, dowager aunts, and that delightful creature, the eccentric aunt. I fear I fall into the latter category.