Yes, but not in chairs that don't belong to us, countered Mma Makutsi. That's the trouble with this country, Mma—there are too many people sitting down in other people's chairs.
YOU DO NOT CHANGE PEOPLE BY SHOUTING AT THEM
Words can make big things little, you know.
Without delay, echoed Charlie. Those are very good words, I think. Without delay. Please will you pay my bill without delay. Please leave without delay. Please improve your attitude without delay… Mma...
Why is it that there are always these problems and misunderstandings between men and women? Surely it would have been better if God had made only one sort of person, and the children had come by some...
When you don’t talk about something, then something will talk about itself for you.
When meeting for lunch somebody one’s uncomfortable with, it’s important to have somewhere to look, don’t you agree?
What was wrong with the past? asked Mama Ramotswe. She intended the question seriously. There were too many people who took the view that the past was bad, that we should rid ourselves of all traces o...
What they would see first would be a darkening of the sky in the east—a change from empty blue to a grey-white that would gradually shade into a heavy, inky purple. And then there would be a wind—the...
What does it matter, she thought, if businesses are left unattended, if people are not always as we want them to be; we need the time just to be human, to enjoy something like this: a boy chasing ants...
We don't forget.... Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little thi...
We can be confident in our dealings with the world when what the world sees is the outer person, with all the outer person's defences: the intimacy of a love affair is a different matter altogether. A...
We are the ones who first ploughed the earth when Modise (God) made it, ran an old Setswana poem. We were the ones who made the food. We are the ones who look after the men when they are little boys,...
We are human and vulnerable, whatever our individual situation: The moon looks on them all The Healers and the brilliant talkers The eccentrics and the silent walkers The dumpy and the tall.
We are born to talk to other people, ... we are born to be sociable and to sit together with others in the shade of the acacia tree and talk about things that happened the day before. We were not born...
We are all human, she would say. Men particularly. You must not be ashamed.
We all have people in our lives we don’t really choose as friends but with whom we’re, well, lumbered, I suppose. Heart-sink friends.
We all had to say goodbye, sooner or later, to those we loved—or they had to say goodbye to us. Those were the only two possibilities that this world allowed. But no matter how much we tried to face u...
Time and time again people showed better qualities than we might dare to hope for, sometimes against all expectation.
Those important brain circuits, the ones that enabled most of us to avoid saying the wrong thing, were simply not there in Martha's case; or fired in the wrong order; or were short-circuiting. In othe...