Sarah Waters
Sarah Waters
Sarah Watersis a Welsh novelist. She is best known for her novels set in Victorian society and featuring lesbian protagonists, such as Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith...
NationalityWelsh
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth21 July 1966
ashes your-freedom
Even ashes are a part of your freedom.
I've never managed to get very far with Henry James.
home occur
I used to write at home, but it didn't ever occur to me to be a writer.
affect change climate dangerous feels global huge large meltdown ours unsettled whether
Ours is a world which feels so unsettled and dangerous in large ways, whether it's terrorism or global financial meltdown or climate change - huge things that affect us deeply, and yet things about which we can do, individually, very little.
people smith society
People say, 'You're like Dickens', but I'm not like Dickens. Zadie Smith is a Dickensian writer because she's writing about society now, just as Dickens was writing about his society.
perfectly rewriting
Sometimes I think I'd be perfectly happy to go on rewriting 'Tipping the Velvet' forever because it was so much fun.
goes novel perhaps
When theatre works, it's like nothing else, and when it doesn't, which is often, it's excruciating. It's perhaps not so excruciating when a novel goes wrong, but there is a kind of magic that can and should happen.
fonder paying
I've ended up feeling fonder of 'The Paying Guests' than of any of my other novels.
felt freedom great wealthy
It was a great childhood. We weren't especially wealthy or anything, but I felt I had a kind of safety and freedom.
confront dynamic relationship slightly though
The relationship you have with your mother is like nothing else. They do kind of know everything about you, even though they don't confront it. That is often a dynamic from childhood onwards. As a teenager, you want to be independent and do slightly furtive things.
happen novels pages point sealed within
Novels are nothing but evolution, but there does come a point when that stops, and the story is sealed within the pages of the book. That doesn't happen with a play. Even performances are different every night.
budding childhood encouraged freedom great time writer
I was encouraged to be imaginative and read, and it was a great childhood for a budding writer because I had the time and the freedom to go into a world of my own.
local shows usher
I was mad about the theatre growing up, really mad. We had a local theatre, the Torch, and I used to usher there. I would see the shows over and over again.
council
My story is the story of many postwar British families. Upward mobility. A council house and then new affluence.