Deborah Moggach
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
Deborah Moggach

'Tulip Fever' did change my life. It did that thing that sometimes happens when a book takes off - it opened doors on to whole other worlds.

Deborah Moggach
Deborah Moggach

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
Deborah Moggach

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
Deborah Moggach

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

Deborah Moggach
Deborah Moggach

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
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
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
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
Deborah Moggach

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
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
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
Deborah Moggach

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
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
Deborah Moggach

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

Deborah Moggach
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
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
Deborah Moggach

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
Deborah Moggach

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
Deborah Moggach

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?'