Everything, thought Mama Ramotswe, has been something before.
Everything could always be worse,’ she would say, ‘and so be grateful that things are only as bad as they are.’ She
Do I shock you? I think I do. That’s the problem these days – nobody speaks their mind. No, don’t smile. They really don’t. We’ve been browbeaten into conformity by all sorts of people who tell us wha...
Could you say that your business had expanded if it had gone from owning one teapot to two? Somehow
But who doesn’t have a lot of unread books? It’s nice, though, just to know that they’re there.
But the real question, boys, is this: do we have a duty to do anything to stop things we may not like? Is it all right just to do nothing, provided that we don’t do anything that makes matters worse?
Blocks of flats could change everything, thought Mma Ramotswe. They were designed for people, but people were not necessarily designed for them. These flats at the edges of the Village, though, were m...
Because sometimes in this life we’re given things that we don’t deserve – that we haven’t done anything to merit, so to speak. We don’t have to give those up if they come our way. And remember this: p...
And yet, she suddenly wondered, should you actually lie about how much Proust you've read?
And she, Isabel, had gone along with this and all the time what was happening was she was becoming increasingly possessive of Jamie without ever having to acknowledge it. Now there was another woman,...
And here, she said to herself, is the victim of the witch hunt, or its modern equivalent. Not much has changed. Witchcraft or sexual harassment: the tactics of persecution were much the same - the loa...
Although she was not a great reader, Mma Potokwane was a firm believer in the power of the book. The more books that Botswana had, in her view, the better. It would be on books that the future would b...
Although she entirely understood the argument in favour of openness, there were limits to the extent to which one should speak frankly. She did not agree with the custom that was sometimes followed in...
And although she'd glibly remarked that you couldn't stand still, was this actually true or was it a hollow axiom as false and misleading as any other trite saying? Why should one not stand still? If...
Your mind like that, then you kept it in good order for a longer period of time, and you put off the day when you would be sitting in the sun, like some of the very old people, not exactly sure which...
Usually better to seek the advice of a stranger—not just any stranger, of course, as one could hardly go out onto the street and confide in the first person one encountered, but a stranger whom you kn...
This was a consequence of increasing prosperity, which, curiously enough, just seemed to bring out greed and selfishness.
They were two people thrown together on a journey, who found themselves sharing the same railway compartment and becoming resigned to each other’s company.
There is something there—some force, or truth, perhaps—to put it at its most general. I sense it, and I suppose I’d even go so far as to say that I yearn for it. I want it to be. Maybe that’s God. But...
Substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one