Cut like crazy. Less is more. I've often read manuscripts - including my own - where I've got to the beginning of,… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
I was encouraged to be imaginative and read, and it was a great childhood for a budding writer because I had the… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
I never expected my books to do even as well as they have. I still feel grateful for it, every single day. — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
“I thought that I could make my life into a book that had no life or love in it. . . .… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
I've just finished a series of Olivia Manning novels. She's best known for two trilogies: Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy. The six… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
Novels are nothing but evolution, but there does come a point when that stops, and the story is sealed within the pages… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
“My happiness is nothing to him,” she said. “Only his books! He has made me like a book. I am not meant… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
We have a name for your disease. We call it a hyper-aesthetic one. You have been encouraged to over-indulge yourself in literature;… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
“Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
Read like mad. But try to do it analytically - which can be hard, because the better and more compelling a novel… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
I love research. Sometimes I think writing novels is just an excuse to allow myself this leisurely time of getting to know… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
“There were about thirty of them, I think - all women; all seated at tables, bearing drinks and books and papers. You… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
“Now, from the crown of my head to the curve of my toe-nails, there was an unguent for every part of me - oil… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
“Miss Craven held up a pair she thought would fit me—monstrous great things they were, of course, and I thought she smiled as she… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
I suppose I really seemed mad, then; but it was only through the awfulness of having said nothing but the truth, and being thought… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
My nan was a nursery maid. Most people weren't in big houses. They were maids of all work. — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
Being in love, you know... it's not like having a canary, in a cage. When you lose one sweetheart, you can't just go out… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
For was that all, she thought bleakly, that love ever was? Something that saved one from loneliness? A sort of insurance policy against not… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
“And yet, I seemed to feel my eyes bound, too, with bands of silk. And at my throat there was a velvet collar.” — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
“No-one speaks. No-one moves (…). We glide, softly, in silence, into our dark and separate hells” — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
“She loved these walks through London. She seemed, as she made them, to become porous, to soak in detail after detail; or else, like… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
“Oh, for shame! Nancy, have you never seen Florrie's face in a chrysanthemum, or a rose?' 'Never.' I said. 'Though there was a flounder… — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
“My locket hangs in my closet beside the glass, the only shining thing among so many shadows.” — Sarah Waters Copy Share Image
