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

Deborah Moggach

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" 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

" 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

" Psych yourself up until you're confident that the world will be interested in what happens to your characters. Confidence is key. "

Deborah Moggach

" 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

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

Deborah Moggach

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" Discover the times when you're most creative - mornings, nights, afternoons - and clear the time to work then. Many writers find the mornings are best, and the afternoons are only good for editorial corrections, or getting the washing done. Others can only work through the night, drunk. "

Deborah Moggach

" 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

" When I was young, I couldn't imagine women of 60 falling in love. For one thing, people used to stay married; they weren't out in the jungle, searching for romance. Besides, these women just looked so ancient - permed hair, beige cardis. "

Deborah Moggach

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Deborah Moggach

" 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

" 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

" I wanted to be a landscape architect, but I trained as a teacher; I worked in publishing; I was a waitress. "

Deborah Moggach

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

Deborah Moggach

" 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

" 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