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 battle.
Mary WesleyPeople try much less hard to make a marriage work than they used to fifty years ago. Divorce is easier.
Mary WesleyThey may turn out to be a great disappointment, or perhaps they may be full of enchanting surprises.
Mary WesleyTwenty years ago, I was living in a lovely cottage on the edge of Dartmoor but I couldn't afford to run a car.
Mary WesleyI remember the evacuee children from towns and cities throwing stones at the farm animals. When we explained that if you did that you wouldnt have any milk, meat or eggs, they soon learned to respect the animals.
Mary WesleyI was sent to a finishing school, which didn't last long when mother found out how badly chaperoned we were. Then I 'came out' before going to a domestic science school.
Mary WesleyMy 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.
Mary WesleyIn 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.
Mary WesleyImagination which comes into play in falling in love is different from any other. Certainly in my case, and I've fallen in love all my life, one imagines the person to be as you want them to be. They frequently turn out to be someone different, for better or worse.
Mary WesleyA 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.
Mary WesleyEach marriage has to be judged separately, and we never know what's going on in another person's marriage.
Mary WesleyMy 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.
Mary WesleyUnimaginative people are spared quite a lot. They're often much happier, because they don't go through all the variety of conceptions of the person they love.
Mary WesleyRebecca is an example of how not to manage men. The rules of the game never change, it requires subtlety.
Mary WesleyThat image of the countryside being a threatening place still exists. People continue to resist the challenge of learning about aspects of life they don't understand.
Mary Wesley