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All Quotes by author - Sara Sheridan
" As an historical novelist - there are few jobs more retrospective. I dumped science at an early age. "
Historical
Science
Early
" How lucky am I? Quite often I speak at book festivals, and people ask me how I got published. There's people who have been working on a book for as long as ten years, and I feel like such a cow. "
Me
Cow
Book
" I always thought that bagels and lox was my soul food, but it turns out it's sushi. "
Thought
Sushi
My Soul
" I am incredibly jammy. I really am. "
Am
Really
I Am
" I'd never be where I am if more successful writers hadn't taken an interest in me and done me a good turn - be it chiming in with constructive criticism or giving me sound advice about my career plan. "
Good
Giving
Advice
" If I hadn't been able to get my first book published, I am not sure what I would have done. "
First
Been
Sure
" I have an ambivalent relationship with Margaret Thatcher. She came to power in May 1979 - a month before my 11th birthday. I was far too young to have developed a great deal of political awareness. I remember it, though - my mother excited at the dinner table because Britain had its first female prime minister. "
Relationship
Birthday
Mother
" I'm grateful that I've enjoyed the support of libraries, bookshops and institutional funders. "
Grateful
Enjoyed
Libraries
" I'm unique - a cosmopolitan mix. "
Cosmopolitan
Unique
Mix
" 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. "
Thought
You
Edge
" 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. "
Grades
Early
Interesting
" I said: 'I'm throwing in my job, and I'm going to write a book.' Everyone thought: 'She's off her trolley,' and it was quite crazy, really. I'm just lucky that it came off. "
She
Lucky
Job
" It's easy to laugh at etiquette, but in a hundred years, our children's grandchildren will almost certainly be laughing at us. "
Us
Grandchildren
Laugh
" It's interesting that, given our culture has so many words that refer to women in a truly derogatory fashion, it's 'lady' - a term that has conferred social respect on our gender for over a thousand years - that has women up in arms. "
Culture
Fashion
Respect
" I've never seen an 'English' books section in, well, an English bookshop, but in Scotland, most bookshops have a set of shelves dedicated to Scottish authors. "
Well
Scotland
Never
" I wanted to find something I could do at home. I sat down with a friend and made a list of all the things I could try, and one of them was writing a novel. "
Writing
Home
Friend
" I write fast. I'm one of the lucky ones. "
Lucky
Write
Fast
" I wrote 'I'm Me' because I was asked to write a children's book. "
Book
Because
Write
" Let's be clear - for people like me, who are obsessed with story and for whom words are their medium, writing is the best job possible. I work hard, but I earn more than the national average wage while I play with my imagination, and for me, that's a dream. "
Words
Best
Work
" Living in Edinburgh, I consider myself particularly lucky - we have the biggest book festival in the world, a plethora of fascinating libraries and museums, and some of the greatest architecture in Europe. "
Book
Myself
World
" Most fledgling and mid-list writers are lucky to be offered a 4-figure sum and are not only expected to deliver copy that needs minimal editing but also take an active part in marketing and publicizing their work. "
Work
Marketing
Lucky
" My family spans many world religions, ethnicities and nationalities. The truth is that I don't have one identity. I'm Scottish, British, European, Humanist, Atheist and in part at least, culturally Jewish. "
Family
Identity
Truth
" My identity has always been confused. Born in Edinburgh of a Scottish/Russian/Jewish mother and an English/Irish/Catholic father, there is no form of guilt to which I was not subjected in my childhood. Members of my immediate family live all over the world - a diaspora of cousins, aunts, uncles and more in a dizzying mix. "
Live
Childhood
Family
" Often we don't notice the stringent rules to which our culture subjects us. "
Rules
Which
Our
" One of the great things about the Fifties is there are so many secrets - people who've come back from the war and done these terrible things that they don't want to think about, or can't say what they did because they signed the Official Secrets Act. "
Done
Secrets
War
" People were consuming on average less calories after the war than during the war. Things were still very tough. If you look at the film footage of London streets, even in areas which weren't slums, there are kids in the streets who are dirty and have no shoes on. It was rough. There was a real edge. "
Tough
People
Shoes
" Personally I estimate about a third of my time is spent on author events, social media and traditional publicity. "
Media
Events
About
" Scotland just isn't terribly Tory. "
Scotland
Just
Terribly
" Scottish writers are particularly successful in the crime genre. "
Genre
Scottish
Crime
" Some matters are simply contentious. Sometimes you're never going to get it right. "
Matters
Right
Sometimes
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