Deborah Moggach quotes:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'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'm mad about gardening. I have an allotment on the other side of Hampstead Heath, and I keep three hens in my garden.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Everything will be alright in the end so if it is not alright it is not the end.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

One sees more and more people who are miserable and demented and you feel it would be both kind and wise to leave them a few pills.

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.

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

All novelists I speak to about how they started usually say it was by pulling up their roots and going to live somewhere else. You see the shape of your life at a distance.

The only real failure is the failure to try, and the measure of success is how we cope with disappointment.

But it's also true that the person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing. All we know about the future is that it will be different. But perhaps what we fear is that it will be the same. So we must celebrate the changes.

Once a character has gelled it's an unmistakable sensation, like an engine starting up within one's body. From then onwards one is driven by this other person, seeing things through their eyes ...

When I was young, I couldnt imagine women of 60 falling in love. For one thing, people used to stay married; they werent out in the jungle, searching for romance. Besides, these women just looked so ancient - permed hair, beige cardis.

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.

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