Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Something I notice speaking to writers from south of Hadrian's Wall is that the culture is different. At base, I think Scotland values its creative industries differently from England. "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

Sara Sheridan

Well

Scotland

Never

" Some matters are simply contentious. Sometimes you're never going to get it right. "

" 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. "

Sara Sheridan

Cow

Book

" The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two. "

" As an historical novelist - there are few jobs more retrospective. I dumped science at an early age. "

" The world loves the 1950s. "

" 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. "

" I write fast. I'm one of the lucky ones. "

" The cosmetic industry really took off in the 1950s. "

" 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. "

" I am incredibly jammy. I really am. "

Sara Sheridan

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. "

" 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. "

" Writers have it easy. If you write a bestseller or have your book made into a movie, you'll never have to work again, or so the myth goes. "

" 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. "

" Scotland just isn't terribly Tory. "

" It's easy to laugh at etiquette, but in a hundred years, our children's grandchildren will almost certainly be laughing at us. "

Sara Sheridan

Grandchildren

Laugh

" 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. "

" Scottish writers are particularly successful in the crime genre. "

" We're all so digital, but the '50s was the era of watches you had to wind. When Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Everest in 1953, Hillary was equipped with a Rolex Oyster Perpetual. "

" 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. "

" I always thought that bagels and lox was my soul food, but it turns out it's sushi. "

" We don't live in a society that has genuine equality, and every woman we know has experienced that. "

" Often we don't notice the stringent rules to which our culture subjects us. "

" 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. "

" If I hadn't been able to get my first book published, I am not sure what I would have done. "

" 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. "

" 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'? "

" 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. "

" 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. "