That's the curious thing about love, isn't it? It makes very ordinary things seem special. It makes them seem so much more valuable than they really are.
That would have been taken out of the Munrowe voice two or three generations ago through being educated at schools that modelled themselves on the English public-school system, even if they were in Sc...
Tea, thought Mma Ramotswe – no matter what was happening, no matter how difficult things became, there was always the tea break – that still moment, that unchangeable ritual, that survived everything,...
She went on to say something else, but Jamie found his attention drifting. He was feeling sleepy, for it was warm, and he could lie there for ever, he thought, listening to the sound of Isabel’s voice...
She was not sure if she would want him to have known; we do not always wish for those for whom we long to know that we long for them, especially if the longing is impossible, or inappropriate. . . to...
She was crying because she was far from home, and who among us has never wanted to do that? There need be no other reason; just that. We cry for home, and for flowers on tables, and biscuits in little...
She wanted everything back, as we do sometimes in our irrationality and regret; we want it all back.
She stopped. It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still...
She imagined what it must be like to have Charlie's mind - to believe that red shoes are faster then other shoes; to believe, as he did, that ducks could drive fire engines and that pigs built houses...
She had barely talked to Jamie about his school days, and she wondered whether this was another area of experience that was for some reason out of bounds. Had he been happy? Who had his school friends...
She had always believed that people who were nasty or unkind to others were only like that because there was something wrong in their lives, and that people who had something wrong in their lives were...
Self-doubt was a luxury, as, perhaps, was the examined life. And yet the examined life, as the adage had it, was the only life worth living.
Saying sorry does not make you look small—it makes you look big. I think so too, said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. But some people are small inside, and if you’re small inside, you can’t be big outside. It ju...
Remember that, she said to herself; remember that in your dealings with others—they may be dying.
Plenty of people were writing novels; in fact, if one did a survey in the street, half of Edinburgh was writing a novel, and this meant that there really weren't enough characters to go round. Unless,...
Perhaps there was no real point to our existence–or none that we could discern–and that meant that the real question that had to be asked was this: How can I make my life bearable? We are here whether...
Perhaps one should expect to be attended to by philosophers in Edinburgh delicatessens, just as one might be waited upon by psychoanalysts in the restaurants of Buenos Aires. Is the braised beef reall...
People who looked after animals were by and large kind people; they simply practised kindness, unlike those who made much of it. Thus, thought Isabel, are virtues best cultivated—in discretion and sil...
Or would Hell be an endless loop of boy bands or rap? Either would be torture.
On the wall of this yard there was the wording, painted in high letters: Reliable Autos. We get you there.Get you where? asked Fanwell. Chobie smiled. Where you want to get. That's where everybody's h...