That’s perfect, he said. I’m sorry about that. It’s genetic, I think. My mother had exactly the same problem, and a cousin of hers too. We’re allergic to raw onion.
That’s a bit of philosophy right there. We all want ice cream in this life. That’s what we want. And that tells us an awful lot about human nature and the way we feel—which is what philosophy is all a...
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...
That was what the story of Goldilocks and the three bears was all about: breach of trust.
That was the problem with human failings – they were often more visible to others than to those whom they afflicted.
That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want.
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,...
Stand on your toe. That is what one said in Setswana if one hoped that something would happen. It was the same as the expression which white people used: cross your fingers.
She would have wished for the suffering of Africa to be relieved, to be legislated out of existence, but it seemed that this would never be, for fundamental unfairness seemed to be a condition of huma...
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 thinking of Mobile, where her mother—her sainted American mother, as she called her—had spent her childhood. That was a place of shady streets; of moss that hung from the boughs of trees, as i...
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 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 moved, so that they were now standing arm in arm: two ladies, she thought, a brown lady from Botswana and a white lady from somewhere far away, America perhaps, somewhere like that, some place of...
She had so much love to give - she had always felt that - and now there was somebody to whom she could give this love, and that, she knew, was good; for that is what redeems us, that is what makes our...
She had brought all of this on herself, and so she had, in a sense, got what she deserved. But, even so, Mma Ramotswe reminded herself, she had a soul like everyone else, and one should not crow over...
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 a taste for sugar, however, and this meant that a doughnut or a cake might follow the sandwich. She was a traditionally built lady, after all, and she did not have to worry about dress size, u...
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.