Mrs. Moffat had taken her hand, for comfort, and they had sat there in silence for a while. Sometimes it seemed as if the world itself was broken, that there was something wrong with all of us, someth...
Most people had something in their lives that was particularly important to them.
Mma Makutsi was unconvinced. Where there is smoke there’s fire, Mma. I have always said that. Mma Ramotswe could not let that pass. But what does Clovis Andersen say in The Principles of Private Detec...
Many waters cannot quench love: the anthem's setting remained in her ears, repeating itself; a tune so powerful that it might gird one against the disappointments of life, rather than make one aware t...
Look at what very ordinary people have lost, and think about that for a moment. What has happened to working-class communities in Scotland? To miners, for example. To fishermen? Who? You might well as...
Lists, she thought, are the stories of our lives; they give a picture of who we are and what we do every day. The
I’m glad you came, said Rob. I like having lunch. I find it a much more sociable meal than dinner.
It was while teaching at this school that Auden experienced the vision that lay at the heart of A Summer Night. He later wrote about it in these words: One fine summer night in June 1933 I was sitting...
It was pure privilege that determined where so many of us ended up in life, Isabel reflected; it was nothing to do with merit, it was privilege. Or, putting it another way, it was a matter of accident...
It just did not make sense; unless, of course, as she had suggested, we all have a weak point, an area of intellectual or emotional vulnerability that may be quite out of keeping with out character.
It is the search for beauty...That is what it is. We find ourselves on this earth--gods and men--and we know that it is beautiful. That is one of the few things we understand--beauty; because it is th...
It is the onion, memory, that makes me cry, he said.
It is so easy to thank people, said Mma Ramotswe, passing the letter over to Mma Makutsi, and most people don't bother to do it. They don't thank the person who does something for them. They just take...
It is considerably more than that, though: it is an acceptance that in the face of meaninglessness or indifference it is still possible to be engaged in the world—it is still possible to love. These a...
It had made her think of the moral flavour of music. Could music really have a moral quality in itself, or was it given this by the circumstances in which it was played - and by the reasons behind its...
It had given her pleasure to do things for him in his lifetime, and now it was a pleasure to do things for his memory. But the memory of a father went only so far.
It had always struck her as wrong that we should judge ourselves-or, more usually, others-by single acts, as if a single snapshot said anything about what a person had been like over the whole course...
If you take God out of it, then right and justice become small, human things. And weak things too.
If the lord came back today, [Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni] thought, he would probably be a mechanic, he reflected. That would be a great honour for mechanics everywhere. And there is no doubt but that e would...
If efficiency were the only value in this life, then we would be content to eat bland but nutritious food every day--and the same food at that. That would keep us alive, but it would make for very dul...