Top 80 Sara Sheridan Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “You couldn’t predict what was going to happen for one simple reason: people.”

— Sara Sheridan

52. “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.”

— Sara Sheridan

53. “Writers of novels live in a strange world where what’s made up is as important as what’s real.”

— Sara Sheridan

54. “I don’t choose between my house phone and my mobile. I don’t choose between my laptop and my notebook. And I don’t intend to choose between my e-reader and my bookshelf.”

— Sara Sheridan

55. “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.”

— Sara Sheridan

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

— Sara Sheridan

57. “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.”

— Sara Sheridan

58. “Sometimes a person’s first assumption was very telling. It revealed how they perceived the situation.”

— Sara Sheridan

59. “History at its best is a gritty, dirty business.”

— Sara Sheridan

60. “A book is a story, even if it’s non-fiction, and once I’ve read it, I have the story with me inside my head always.”

— Sara Sheridan

61. “I’m not sure how much easier it is for a mother to balance her life now – have we simply swapped one set of restrictions for another?”

— Sara Sheridan

62. “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.”

— Sara Sheridan

63. “I believe that being able to communicate directly with readers is a boon. I certainly enjoy it as much as they do.”

— Sara Sheridan

64. “They should be taking bonuses from bankers, not library books from schoolchildren. What kind of society are we building?”

— Sara Sheridan

65. “Maria didn’t fear the sea but, as taught by her father, she respected its power. In her experience the ocean had no intent to drown travellers.”

— Sara Sheridan

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

— Sara Sheridan

67. “For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists.”

— Sara Sheridan

68. “Scotland consistently produces world-class writers.”

— Sara Sheridan

69. “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.”

— Sara Sheridan

70. “I believe the era of the militant lady is back.”

— Sara Sheridan

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

— Sara Sheridan

72. “I jealously guard my research time and I love fully immersing myself in those dusty old books and papers. It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.”

— Sara Sheridan

73. “Very often the characters people respond to best have little parts of reality they can relate to.”

— Sara Sheridan

74. “Researching books gets you into nothing but trouble.”

— Sara Sheridan

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

— Sara Sheridan

76. “Her eyes betrayed no shock at the sights of the quay as they unfolded – not the sweating deckhands, the prostitutes crowding the ship, the hubbub of stalls, including one where three slaves were for sale, their ankles manacled. She might as well have been walking through a country garden as she moved inexorably away from the water.”

— Sara Sheridan

77. “Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer’s job.”

— Sara Sheridan

78. “The smog curled between the streetlamps and the spokes of the wrought iron framework. It seemed through your body and into your bones.”

— Sara Sheridan

79. “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.”

— Sara Sheridan

80. “As an historical novelist – there are few jobs more retrospective.”

— Sara Sheridan

81. “Scotland just isn’t terribly Tory.”

— Sara Sheridan

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

— Sara Sheridan

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

— Sara Sheridan

84. “Sometimes I create a character from a scrap – a mere mention that has been left behind.”

— Sara Sheridan

85. “I had loved poetry and the theatre. Now I loved adventure more.”

— Sara Sheridan

86. “It had occurred to her many times that on board it didn’t matter where you were coming from or where you were heading. Each voyage had its own charisma. Like writing a book – word by word – or crossing a country – step by step – each minute had to be lived moment by moment.”

— Sara Sheridan

87. “There was something indomitable about Maria – like Britannia. He’d heard that she kept her head during a Chilean earthquake the year before when men of greater age and experience had panicked. Afterwards she was discovered calmly taking notes, recording the way the land hand risen, for publication, she said.”

— Sara Sheridan

88. “Many existing top 20 Scottish writers have flourished in part because of good turns done by institutions, arts community, libraries and bookshops.”

— Sara Sheridan

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

— Sara Sheridan