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" 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. "

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" 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

" 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. "

" You can cycle through London on the side streets, which are less polluted - and much more interesting anyway. "

Deborah Moggach

Interesting

London

" Nothing beats weaving through the rush-hour traffic or whizzing past the eternal gridlock that is the Strand. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I was never a lonely child who sat looking at the rain sliding down the window. "

" The greatest artists know how to entertain, or else nobody would read them. "

" Men take much more notice of older women in France, so I might move there. I think I'm a good bet. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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?' "

" 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. "

" I'm always running my mouth off and getting myself in trouble, so I'm trying to do it less. "

" 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. "

" I've had a very lucky life because I'm of this generation where everything was possible. "

" I'm quite easy to live with and very easy going. "

" 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. "

" It was very liberating, living in a foreign country, a place where everything was new and strange - the food, the customs, the climate, everything. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Once you start cycling, the city opens up for you. No longer are you fighting it, hot and frustrated; no longer are you at the mercy of bus drivers, roadworks, decisions made by others and over which you have no control. Believe me, once you've tasted this freedom, you're hooked. "

Deborah Moggach

Decisions

Freedom

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'd like to be a jazz singer, but I couldn't possibly do it; nobody would want me, anyway. "

Deborah Moggach

Want

Nobody

" 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. "