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" 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
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" 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
" 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
" I'd like to be a jazz singer, but I couldn't possibly do it; nobody would want me, anyway. "
Deborah Moggach
Want
Me
Nobody
" I've had a very lucky life because I'm of this generation where everything was possible. "
Deborah Moggach
Lucky
Where
Possible
" I have four Rhode Island Red hens. I get two eggs from them a day. They're feathered dustbins that eat leftover food and weeds, and they're easy to look after - I throw some grain at them in the morning, take the eggs and that's it. I love the sound of clucking. "
Deborah Moggach
Day
Food
Love
" 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
" I am a great believer in having the power to end your life and knowing that, in extremis, you can. But I would not want to involve anybody else in my actions if it could imperil them. "
Deborah Moggach
Power
You
I Am
" All novelists I speak to about how they started usually say it was by pulling up their roots and going to live somewhere else. You see the shape of your life at a distance. "
Deborah Moggach
Speak
You
Roots
" It's a very rich brew that's in your psyche by the time you're in your 60s, and I think that's rather interesting. It makes you feel you've lived a very long life; it's like going on holiday to three different cities rather than spending two weeks in Lisbon. You look back on the holiday, and you seem to have been away forever. "
Deborah Moggach
Time
Think
Rich
" I work every day from 9:30 or so until lunchtime. In the afternoons, I become a normal person - go shopping and do the garden and look after my grandchildren. "
Deborah Moggach
Look
Shopping
Work
" You need to know the characters as living, breathing people before you start the plot; otherwise, you'll feel panic, anarchy and chaos. "
Deborah Moggach
Chaos
People
Start
" The greatest artists know how to entertain, or else nobody would read them. "
Deborah Moggach
Nobody
Know
How
" 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 hate fussing about in the kitchen when I have people over to supper, so I make a rich beef stew cooked in wine with carrots, sundried tomato paste and chopped chorizo sausage. "
Deborah Moggach
Rich
Wine
Hate
" 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
" It was very liberating, living in a foreign country, a place where everything was new and strange - the food, the customs, the climate, everything. "
Deborah Moggach
Country
Strange
Place
" I'm quite easy to live with and very easy going. "
Deborah Moggach
Live
Going
Easy
" I was never a lonely child who sat looking at the rain sliding down the window. "
Deborah Moggach
Window
Rain
Looking
" I found Hollywood pretty bruising and uncreative. The executives are all in thrall to the boss, and spend their times double-guessing him or her, and trying to remember what he/she said and then applying them to the script, whether it was useful or not. They're all in fear for their jobs. "
Deborah Moggach
Her
Trying
Remember
" You can cycle through London on the side streets, which are less polluted - and much more interesting anyway. "
Deborah Moggach
More
Interesting
London
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 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'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 look in the mirror expecting to be 34 and see someone who is 58. What's that all about? I haven't even thought about turning 60 yet, but so many of my friends have celebrated it by now that it's lost its terror. And I don't mind being 58; it's just such a surprise when one doesn't feel it at all. "
Deborah Moggach
Surprise
Mind
Thought
" My favourite room in my house is easily the top room, which is a bedroom but also a bathroom, with a big, wooden carved bath, two huge fireplaces and a raised bit in the corner for performances. I've had some really lovely parties and poetry readings up there. "
Deborah Moggach
House
Bath
Two
" 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
" 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