IT WAS three days after the satisfactory resolution of the Patel case. Mma Ramotswe had put in her bill for two thousand pula, plus expenses, and had been paid by return of post. This astonished her....
I said to him that Zululand sounded fine, but that every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map.
I am blessed, and being blessed is something more than just having something; it is a state of mind in which the good of the world is illuminated, is understood. It is as if one is vouchsafed a vision...
How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment?...only the completely happy think that they are in the correct place.
How do you calibrate pain? asked Jamie. By cutting out the background pain of the world, answered Isabel. By cutting all that out, not registering it, and responding only to those painful things that...
His sixth year, it seemed to him, had lasted a remarkably long time and there were points at which he frankly wondered whether he would ever turn seven. But now it was the night before his birthday, a...
He’s called Ottolenghi, that chef. And he deserves a tongue twister of his own. Lo, Ottolenghi lengthens leeks laterally. How about that? Or, Competent chefs count cous cous cautiously?
He was one of those people, she thought, who just seemed to know a great deal. And he spoke so wisely, as if had thought for hours about everything he said.
He said: What is patriotism but love of the food one ate as a child?
He knew that one should not punch people who annoyed one, although there was a case for it at times, a seemingly irresistible case.
He had very few criticisms to make of Precious Ramotswe, his wife and founder of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, but if one were to make a list of her faults—which would be a minuscule document, b...
He had sat there with ten glasses set out in front of him, and panicked when he tasted the first. He thought that the wine was Portuguese, and was on the point of setting out the arguments to support...
Forgiveness was never easy, but Mma Ramotswe believed in it because she knew that without forgiveness we cluttered our lives with old business.
For that was a very special sort of love, she realised—love given back to one who loved you; that love was like the first rain, the longed-for rain, which washed away the pain and sadness of the world...
For each of us, she thought, there is out completeness in another. Whether we find it, or it finds us, or it eludes all finding is a matter of moral luck.
Even a battlefield can be peaceful, can be a place for flowers to grow, for children to play; the memories, the sadness, are within us, not part of the world about us.
Do not be ashamed to cry, Rra, said Mma Ramotswe. It is the way that things begin to get better. It is the first step.
Do not act meanly, do not be unkind, because the time for setting things right may pass before your heart changes course. Isabel Dalhousie
Children, like cats, made a house into a home, and the echoes of their presence lingered.
But remember, that for every cheating wife in Botswana, there are five hundred and fifty cheating husbands.Mma Makutsi whistled. That is an amazing figure, she said. Where did you read that?Nowhere, c...