Quotes from Deborah Moggach

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

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.

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.

You need to know the characters as living, breathing people before you start the plot; otherwise, you'll feel panic, anarchy and chaos.

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?'

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Whatever you do they will love you; even if they don't love you they are connected to you till you die. You can be boring and tedious with sisters, whereas you have to put on a good face with friends.

You keep your past by having sisters. As you get older, they're the only ones who don't get bored if you talk about your memories.

She is color, waiting to be mixed; a painting, ready to be brushed into life. She is a moment, waiting to be fixed forever under a shiny varnish.

If the does not come today he exists, he breathes this air and walks these streets.

Our task is not to solve enigmas, but to be aware of them, to bow our heads before them and also to prepare the eyes for never-ending delight and wonder.

How easily I can be betrayed by those who mean me no harm.

The only way to fail is to not try.

Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret places is pleasant. —JACOB CATS, Moral Emblems, 1632

He looked such an inoffensive chap, but then so did most of the men who turned up in front of her bench, guilty of the most brutal abuse.

All life is a risk—I'm a physician, I'm only too well aware of that. But some people sail closer to the wind and they are the ones after my own heart. I admire them for that, you see, because I have been incapable of doing it myself.

It is this sexual excess, no doubt, that has caused Jan to neglect his work. Lots of spermatozoa enfeebles a man and thins his blood. - Jacob

The Dutch are a hardworking, resourceful people; when their land is flooded they pump out the water and drain it again. They are used to repairing the ravages caused by the wrath of God, for He has sent these tempests to test them.