Deborah Moggach

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. ”

If people want to take their lives and are helped to do so, the punishment is tragic for all concerned. ”

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. ”

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

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. ”

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. ”

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. ”

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

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. ”

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. ”