Sara Sheridan

“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.”

“It was clearly a lot more difficult in the field than in the office, where you could keep your distance and maintain a calculated composure. Being faced with real people was a far tougher call on one’s judgement.”

“The best historical stories capture the modern imagination because they are, in many senses, still current - part of a continuum.”

“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.”

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

“There are so many ways to do research - even watching old Ealing comedies, watching people getting on and off buses in London, looking at household interiors.”

“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.”

“I realized early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job. Because there are no pay grades and very little structure, people make interesting assumptions about the profession.”

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

“Jack had been the love of her life and he was gone. It seemed now that there had never been bad times, though she knew that wasn’t true.”

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

“I can't bear literary snobbery.”

“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.”

“I once did an event with Ian Rankin where he said he didn't really need to do much background research because his books are set in the present, and I just thought: 'You lucky, lucky beast!' because as a historical novelist, I live constantly on the edge of wondering whether tissues had been invented.”

“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.”

“He often came back ‘all thinky’ from work.”

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

“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?”

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

“What was it that marked me as a woman and was I prepared to let it go?”