About Mary Wesley: Mary Wesley was an English novelist. During her career, she was one of Britain's most successful novelists, selling three million copies of her books, including 10 bestsellers in the last 20 years of her life.
In my eighties, my best friends are in their fifties, and I have many friends at university. It keeps one young, and up with the vocabulary. That's terribly important, especially for a writer.
A lot of people stop short. They don't actually die but they say, 'Right I'm old, and I'm going to retire,' and then they dwindle into nothing. They go off to Florida and become jolly boring.
I don't write for any particular kind of person.
I found out only recently that we were making an index of enemy code signs.
I have a garden, and I'm passionately interested in young people.
I never really know the title of a book until it's finished.
It seemed sensible to move to a market town where I could walk everywhere.
It was pretty awful for us children because we never really knew the local children. Mother was keen for us to learn languages, so our travels took us to France and Italy, as well as the West Country.
Looking back, I understand that I was teaching myself to write.
My first husband would never make up his mind in less than five years, so I used to get him to think that whatever course of action needed to be taken was his idea. Then he'd go right ahead.
Of course risk-taking does not always pay off, but it's a lot of fun!
We all lie to each other, present some sort of front.
You know what it's like to persuade a pigheaded child to do something they don't want to. If they hear the same suggestion from someone else, they'll go right off and do it.
Rebecca is an example of how not to manage men. The rules of the game never change, it requires subtlety.
Writing Part of the Scenery has been a very different experience. I have been reminded of people and events, real and imaginary which have been part of my life. This book is a celebration of the land which means so much to me.
Women's courage is rather different from men's. The fact that women have to bring up children and look after husbands makes them braver at facing long-term issues, such as illness. Men are more immediately courageous. Lots of people are brave in batt...
Twenty years ago, I was living in a lovely cottage on the edge of Dartmoor but I couldn't afford to run a car.
We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.
My father was a soldier and my mother was a great mover. She once counted up how many places she had lived in during the first 25 years of her marriage and it came to 20.
They may turn out to be a great disappointment, or perhaps they may be full of enchanting surprises.
