Deborah Moggach Quotes

Actors create a fantastic lifestyle thinking they're going to be able to maintain it. Then they can't get work or have to start taking work that doesn't suit them.

My son tried to work in films and he ultimately gave it up, he finally couldn't make a living, he couldn't support himself. He worked all the time and he didn't make enough money to have a house, have an apartment.

Geniuses sometimes end up very unhappy, without a penny.

Writing is a very strenuous thing - it's like banging your head against a wall. At the end of the day, acting is better, just because nobody ever asked me if I wanted a Pellegrino in the writer's room.

I still have to work paycheck to paycheck. Being in show business doesn't indicate that you're a 'success,' in my opinion.

I went from being a hustler, working different jobs to renting rooms off Craigslist, and I just wasn't happy.

Doing music to pay bills is an uncomfortable situation. I never wanted to be in that situation.

For years I was doing the excruciating weightlifting of writing scripts - but then I stayed thin and someone else got all the muscles.

To be famous and broke is hard.

What a beautiful art, but what a wretched profession.

My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't making enough money to live on, and was beginning to think I'd have to give up the dream of being a full-time writer.

I've been making bronze sculptures for a long time. My sculptures are wholly unsuccessful and uncommercial. No one is even the remotest bit interested in them. So it's almost like my hobby.

The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.

We all know funny people who can't get it down on the page - even funny writers who can't get it down on the page.

I write very, very slowly, and for me, I have to summon all sorts of resources to make one of these pieces work.

In between, I go broke because I seem to do movies where you're not paid a lot as an actor.

I thought I had swell ideas, and wonderful musicians, but the hell of it, no one else did.

When a book goes well, it abandons me. I am the most abandoned writer in the world.

I don't think screenwriting is therapeutic. It's actually really, really hard for me. It's not an enjoyable process.

I write in longhand and assemble lots of notes, and then I try to collate them into a coherent chronology. It's like groping along in the dark. I like writing and find it challenging, but I don't find it easy.

There's the occasional script that just hammers you, that you can't shower off.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

I have made a number of movies that I have never seen. It's not a matter of ego. It's a matter of being disappointed. It's really a shame. It's just as difficult to make a movie that no one cares about as to make a hit.

I think if I've worked anything through with screenwriting it's that I'm not going to be able to work anything through.

One would think that in writing about literary men and matters there would be no difficulty in finding a title for one's essay, or that any embarrassment which might arise would be from excess of material. I find this, however, far from being the case.