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" All I want is for people, when they read my books, to feel companioned, to feel they're not alone in the world. "
Deborah Moggach
World
Alone
Books
Related Quotes:
" Don't start writing your novel until you know your characters very, very well. What they'd do if they saw somebody shoplifting. What they were like at school. What shoes they wear. Spend days - weeks, months - being them until they thicken up and start to breathe. "
Deborah Moggach
Writing
You
Know
" Living apart is hardly possible if people have children together. It can also be more expensive to maintain two homes. But then, it's expensive to break up when you live in one property. "
Deborah Moggach
You
Together
Children
" I did have a go with Botox, but I couldn't move my eyebrows. I also, at one point, had that filler stuff injected, but I looked like a hamster with wodges of food in its cheeks, so I stopped that. "
Deborah Moggach
Cheeks
Point
Food
" Psych yourself up until you're confident that the world will be interested in what happens to your characters. Confidence is key. "
Deborah Moggach
Confidence
Yourself
You
" My parents were both writers - they would type their manuscripts sitting side by side on the veranda of our house near Watford - so I wanted to do something different. I wanted to be a bluegrass singer, an architect, a landscape gardener, or to do something with animals. "
Deborah Moggach
Side
Landscape
Animals
" Independence is fun, especially when there's a beloved waiting in the wings, and freedom makes you a more interesting person. Having separate lives brings fresh air into a relationship. "
Deborah Moggach
Freedom
Waiting
You
" It's not a failure if a marriage or partnership ends after a certain number of years. I think, in general, we expect too much of partners. We can't fulfil a person's every single need and, after ten years or so, many relationships wear out. If we were more philosophical about it, we wouldn't try to blame the other person or be bitter. "
Deborah Moggach
Think
Marriage
Failure
" Whining writers are a hideous sight; we should really shut up, because we are lucky if we can cobble together a living from all of this. "
Deborah Moggach
Shut Up
Living
Lucky
" Men take much more notice of older women in France, so I might move there. I think I'm a good bet. "
Deborah Moggach
Think
Women
Older Women
" Writing a novel is a huge adventure; when it's going well it's more fun than fun. When it stutters to a halt put it aside. Go for a swim, go for a walk, take a week off. Don't panic or be afraid; you and your characters are in it together. Trust them to come to your rescue. "
Deborah Moggach
Together
Walk
Trust
" Cycling is the only way to free ourselves from the misery of the Tube, the wall-to-wall buses that line Oxford Street, the hopelessness of even thinking about driving. "
Deborah Moggach
Free
Driving
Street
" My first novel, 'You Must be Sisters,' was started in Pakistan. I've wrote several novels and a TV drama set or partly-set there. "
Deborah Moggach
TV
Drama
First
" I'm always running my mouth off and getting myself in trouble, so I'm trying to do it less. "
Deborah Moggach
Always
Trying
Trouble
" I was never a lonely child who sat looking at the rain sliding down the window. "
Deborah Moggach
Window
Rain
Looking
" I do believe that we baby-boomers are reinventing ageing as we enter it. We're living longer and expecting more from life; the success of 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,' and other films and novels about finding love late in life, have shown that if we're up for it, there are adventures awaiting us. "
Deborah Moggach
Believe
Best
Late
" I like missing someone and being missed; I like looking forward to seeing him again. I like getting emails and texts with lots of xxx's. "
Deborah Moggach
Forward
Him
Looking
" Living together places a huge burden on the other person to be lover, friend, entertainments manager, chef, domestic help, which is almost impossible and can lead to disappointment. If you don't live together, you spend more time with other people and ease the pressure off your lover. "
Deborah Moggach
Live
Time
Chef
" Nothing beats weaving through the rush-hour traffic or whizzing past the eternal gridlock that is the Strand. "
Deborah Moggach
Traffic
Nothing
Past
" Bringing my two children up while writing was just a part of life. I'd much rather have had their interruptions than been stuck in a sterile office. This way, I had welcome distractions. I had to load the washing machine, I had to go out and buy lemons. "
Deborah Moggach
Welcome
Children
Life
" I've had a very lucky life because I'm of this generation where everything was possible. "
Deborah Moggach
Lucky
Where
Possible
" A novel is utterly your own creation, a very private process. I think of a novel as a noun and a screenplay as a verb. In a novel, very little needs to happen; you can explore a person's memories and thoughts and fantasies. In a screenplay, it's all action; you must push the story on. "
Deborah Moggach
Story
Think
Thoughts
" The traditional writer is a sensitive only child, asthmatic, who sits on the window seat watching the drops of rain slide down the pane, very introspective. I'm not inward-looking. I would never go to a shrink. I don't want to know what I'm thinking. I don't really like discussions in my family. It may be an avoidance thing. "
Deborah Moggach
Thinking
Child
Family
" I have a hippopotamus skull next to my bed, called Gregory. When I was six, my three sisters and I clubbed together and paid £4 for it in a junk shop. We collected owl pellets, ostrich eggs and sheep skulls for our natural history museum at home. "
Deborah Moggach
Together
Sheep
History
" My perfect day is to work incredibly well in the morning and write something wonderful, then take the dog for a walk and go for a swim in the ladies' ponds on Hampstead Heath or work in my allotment. Then I get tarted up in the evening and go out in London to dinner or the cinema. "
Deborah Moggach
Work
Day
Dinner
" You can cycle through London on the side streets, which are less polluted - and much more interesting anyway. "
Deborah Moggach
More
Interesting
London
" I've written something like 17 novels, which isn't bad, I suppose, but my father wrote 120 books, my mother 40. In comparison, I'm lazy. "
Deborah Moggach
Bad
Father
Lazy
" I wanted to be a landscape architect, but I trained as a teacher; I worked in publishing; I was a waitress. "
Deborah Moggach
Landscape
Teacher
Publishing
" I'm quite easy to live with and very easy going. "
Deborah Moggach
Live
Going
Easy
" I'm mad about gardening. I have an allotment on the other side of Hampstead Heath, and I keep three hens in my garden. "
Deborah Moggach
Three
Side
Mad
" I feel as if someone is going to come along, feel my collar and say: 'Do you really think you can get people to read books you've made up about people that don't exist?' "
Deborah Moggach
People
Think
Feel