Of course not, said Mma Makutsi. There is nothing to be ashamed of in drinking one hundred cups of tea a week, Mma. Which is … She paused again. More than five thousand cups of tea a year, Mma. That i...
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, she asked, do you think that our souls grow as we get older? He did not answer immediately, but when he did, she thought his answer quite perfect. Yes, he said. Our souls get wide...
Modern sentences are short. In Proust, we encounter sentences which appear interminable, meandering on and on in a way which suggests that the author had no desire to bring a satisfying or intriguing...
Mma Ramotswe had been thinking a great deal recently about how people might be fitted in. The world was a large place, and one might have thought that there was enough room for everybody. But it seeme...
Maybe not, mused Maggie. If we eat pies, then we should never, not for one moment, look down on the making of them. I don’t, said William.
Matthew and Elspeth knew the Duke of Johannesburg, of course. Matthew had first met him some years earlier when he had gone to a party at Single-Malt House, the Duke’s seat. Most of us have houses or...
Let’s go back to the lines at the end of In Praise of Limestone: What I hear is the sound of underground streams / What I see is a limestone landscape. Close your eyes and try to imagine the shape of...
It's how we read the face, said Ian. Remember that you're talking to a psychologist. We like to think about things like that. It's a question of numerous little signals that create the overall impress...
It's easy to be foolish... It's dead simple, really. All you have to be is human and to allow yourself to do the human things, like fall in love with somebody when you know that there's no point and w...
It was safer, he thought, to keep it to himself; because there are many ways of loving.
In fact, none of us knows how he ever managed to get his LLB in the first place. Maybe they’re putting law degrees in cornflakes boxes these days.
If you knew what is was like to be another person, then how could you possibly do something which would cause pain? The problem, though, was that there seemed to be people in whom that imaginative par...
If you are there to staunch the tears of the world, then it does not cross your mind that you yourself may weep.
If we were all responsible for the misdeeds of the governments that represent us, thought Isabel, then the moral burden would be just too great.
If a person acts out of character, then there’s one thing you can be sure of: there is something wrong. I have seen this so many times I have lost count.
I worry about you a great deal, Mma. I worry that you will take all the cares of the world on your shoulders and that you will collapse under the weight. I worry that you will open your heart to so ma...
I think this bandage is not needed, said Mma Ramotswe, bending down to remove it. Hospitals feel they have to put a bandage on anybody who goes there—just in case. Sometimes you get a bandage even if...
I think it is time that I put the kettle on,
How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment?
He represents innocence, and innocence has taken such a profound battering in our times. We have mocked it. We have sullied it. We have put it in intensive care, and frankly, I don’t see how it can su...