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
perfectly rewriting
Sometimes I think I'd be perfectly happy to go on rewriting 'Tipping the Velvet' forever because it was so much fun.
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.
dramas overlap plot relatively sort
I like dramas because there's a big overlap between film and fiction, so I feel relatively qualified to talk about plot and characterisation and that sort of thing.
lots toward waist
The early '20s were like the waist of an hourglass. Lots of things were hurtling toward it and squeezing through it and then hurtling out the other side.
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.
sad moving-on grief
And perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.
past want
I do love the past but wouldnt want to live in it.
no-patience terrible deranged
There is no patience so terrible as that of the deranged.
ashes your-freedom
Even ashes are a part of your freedom.
writing mad trying
Read like mad. But try to do it analytically - which can be hard, because the better and more compelling a novel is, the less conscious you will be of its devices. It's worth trying to figure those devices out, however: they might come in useful in your own work.
voice gentleman
Why do gentlemen's voices carry so clearly, when women's are so easily stifled?
lust curious
It's a curious, wanting thing.
mad said nothing-but-the-truth
I suppose I really seemed mad, then; but it was only through the awfulness of having said nothing but the truth, and being thought to be deluded.
wine blood rose
The bad blood rose in me, just like wine.