Deborah Moggach Quotes

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Deborah Moggach

Profession : Writer

Birth : June 28, 1948

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

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

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

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

Deborah Moggach

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

'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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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