Quotes from Sara Sheridan

Everyone assumes writers spend their time lounging around, writing and occasionally striking a pose whilst having a think.

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

It took a certain kind of person to come from luxury and seek out danger.

Readers are so much more important than well, just about everything.

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

The law don't like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble.

I'm a novelist by trade and my job is to write a story rather than reconstruct actual events.

During the war some of the country's sharpest minds had looked as if they had been dragged through a hedge backwards.

Britain wouldn't have won the war without its eccentric geniuses.

Musicians are the worst – they're charming if you're lucky but they ain't steady.

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

As a historical novelist, there is very little I like more than spending time sorting through boxes of old letters, diaries, maps, trinkets, and baubles.

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.

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.

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.

She wishes her grandmother had not been so protective, and that she understood better what passes between a man and woman. As it is, she simply enjoys the feelings and wonders if they are what lightning is made of, for everything comes back to the weather. Tears like rain. Smiles like the sun. Hair as dry as sand and fear like the dark ocean.

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

Google maps are one thing but there's no substitute for pounding the beat and I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to break into the back of the houses on Belgrave Place. Once I even for followed by a suspicious householder - I'd been hanging around staring at the exterior of his flat for too long.

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.

The question shouldn't be, 'Are we guilty about our Colonial past?' it should be, 'Why aren't we more guilty about our corporate present?

The financial value put on the job of the writer and the misconceptions around that make it extremely difficult to enter the profession.

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?

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.

Today is the anniversary of my husband's death," Maria announced. It was a dramatic statement, but the occasion seemed to demand it. "And I am going to leave.