The rules of the jungle did not apply to those who wrote the rules of the jungle.
The recipe for each child is just for that child, even if it is the same mother and father.
The mention of God made Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni frown. In his experience, people were always claiming that God agreed with them even when there was little or no evidence that this was the case.
That, said Isabel, is the most painful feature of lost love. you wonder what the other person is doing. Right at this moment. What is he/she doing?
That is important, said Mma Makutsi from behind her desk. One does not want a lady who talks too much.
That at least was a consolation: separation and loss were something that we all experienced; the pain was shared, and was perhaps easier for that.
Somewhere in the organisation, high in its upper reaches, were minds that churned out page after page of guidance notes, instructions, and policy statements. Most of these were filed and forgotten; se...
She should not have taken any of these people at face value. She had been naive. But this conclusion, she realized, pointed unambiguously in the direction of cynicism. And she would not be a cynic. It...
She had not made a lot of money, but she had not made a loss, and she had been happy and entertained. That counted for infinitely more than a vigorously healthy balance sheet. In fact, she thought, an...
She had been seized with a sudden existential horror. The house had white carpets and white furniture and, most significantly, no books.
She gazed at her husband. Being loved and admired by a man like that—and she knew that this man, this mechanic, this fixer of machines with their broken hearts, did indeed love and admire her—was like...
Poor Erik, muttered Anna. No, said Ulf. No. Not poor Erik—fortunate Erik. Anna gave Ulf a dubious look. But all he thinks of... ...is fishing. Yes, but does that make him unhappy? Quite the contrary:...
Places had echoes- and if one were sensitive, one might just pick up some resonance from the past, some feeling for what had happened.
Pickled onions had nothing to do with moral imagination, but were important in their own quiet, vinegary way, Isabel supposed.
People caused harm to others because they were of malevolent disposition, that was shear human wickedness. something that has always existed and always would.Some people it seemed derived pleasure fro...
Not all taxi drivers, Paul had discovered, actually wanted to take passengers to their destination; some of them, he felt, were in it for the arguments, or the opportunity to pontificate, or for the s...
Never be put off by rudeness, Mma, she whispered. It is the rude person who is rude, not you.
Mr. Polopetsi is such a…such a modest man, even perhaps a bit mousy. She transferred her gaze to Mma Ramotswe. Not that I want to be rude, Mma.
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was not a lazy man, but it was remarkable to reflect how most men imagined that things like tea and food would simply appear if they waited long enough. There would always be a wom...
Moral beauty existed as clearly as any other form of beauty and perhaps that was where we could find the God who was so vividly, and sometimes bizarrely, described in our noisy religious explanations....