Quotes from Sara Sheridan

She picked up the stout and took a sip. It slid down her throat like silk.

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.

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.

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

He tasted of whisky and his skin was rough where he hadn't shaved, but Mirabelle kissed him back.

Once they have dedicated themselves to a cause, women will fight to the end for it.

Only a man with nothing to hide could make that kind of racket.

So what if she wasn't a pushover? So what if she had some mettle and didn't wear her heart on her sleeve? She had done everything she had done for the best. For king and country.

Can I fetch you something, madam? A cup of tea?' In the old days she'd have been 'miss' and he'd have offered her a cocktail.

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

Everyone was important during the war. Everyone. We worked together and we won.

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

Some women will do anything for a glass of champagne and a safe bed.

The curve of my waist in a tight fitting summer dress can really make me new friends.

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

We can learn so much looking outside our core field of expertise.

If the universe was scientific and just left to itself, then we'd have statistical probabilities to rely on. But once people are involved it sometimes becomes much more problematic because they're erratic. People do crazy things that don't make sense.

I'm drawn to the 1950s for lots of reasons - everything from the fashion to the increasing sense of freedom and modernity that builds throughout the decade.

I wondered if that was what I was doing myself – caring so much about something that was so long gone that I was only propping it up.

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

History makes my mouth water - and that is as much because of the voids in what documentation remains as what is set in stone.

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

The mass communications that could enable our politics for good have instead turned it into a bland conglomeration of stinted opinion cloaked in the occasional media frenzy of blame or denial.

Lately Mirabelle had reflected wistfully if people even noticed her – a smartly dressed woman who came and went along the Promenade, always alone.