Mma Ramotswe did not like lying, but sometimes it was necessary, particularly when faced with people who were promoted beyond their talents.
Mma Ramotsew accepted her large slice of cake and looked at the rich fruit within it. There were at least seven hundred calories in that, she thought, but it did not matter; she was a traditionally bu...
Mma Ramoswe shaded her eyes with a hand.All that work, she mused. And now this.Mma Potsane shrugged her shoulders. But that is always true, Mma, she said. Even Gaborone. Look at all those buildings. H...
Mma Makutsi sighed. You don’t understand, Charlie. The word chairman covers both men and women. She paused. Mind you, Mma Potokwane, many people these days just use the word chair. Perhaps you’d like—...
Look at every territorial dispute you care to mention. Northern Ireland, for instance. Religion in that case, Jamie ventured. Not just. Religion was the badge of identity, but it wasn’t really about w...
Lions walk on four legs, observed Mma Makutsi. Was this man walking on four legs? That can be a big giveaway, Mma.
Life happens, she thought; whatever we do, life just happens.
Leave them, said Isabel. Jamie can iron them himself. It’s very therapeutic for men to iron. Therapeutic for women, that is.
It was curious how some people had a highly developed sense of guilt, she thought, while others had none. Some people would agonise over minor slips or mistakes on their part, while others would feel...
It must be frustrating being a poet-or any sort of artist-and not being able to offend anyone any more.
It is because you are generous in spirit; and may I be like that; may I become like you—which unrealistic wish, to become the other, is such a true and revealing symptom of love, its most obvious clue...
Isabel saw the intimacy of the gestures and felt immediately empty, a sensation so physical and so overwhelming that she felt for a moment that she might stop breathing, being empty of air
In her experience, the places one set off for were usually still there no matter when one arrived; it would be different, naturally enough, if towns, villages, houses moved—then one might have a real...
In bed that night, in the darkness, with the illuminated dial of her alarm clock glowing from the bedside table, she asked herself whether one could force oneself to like somebody, or whether one coul...
If you punish somebody harshly, she said, then you are simply inflicting more pain on the world. You are also punishing not only that person, but his family and the people who love him. You are punish...
I watched him walk down the path from the house and then off on to the dusty road. People do that in India. When they reach a certain time of life, they sometimes just walk off and become holy men and...
I think it’s best for us to face up to our own mistakes, she
I am just saying that we have to have some things that we like, otherwise we shall be very unhappy. And if you are very unhappy you can die – we all know that.
I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own.
I am grateful to you for being who you are: for standing up for ladies with large glasses and a bad skin and for everybody else who has had to battle to get where they have got. And most of all I am g...