As a child she had believed that wrongs would always be righted, that somehow the world would not let the innocent suffer, but now she realised that this was not true. Old oppressors were replaced by...
What moved me was that I had found something I didn't think could exist. And that thing - the thing that I found - was very simple. Most people know all about it and have never really doubted it becau...
. . for most of us there was a central, unavoidable problem— the world was populated by people who were unlike us . That explained so many wars— particularly religious ones; that explained persecution...
You had to watch people—if you were not careful, all sorts of people would promote themselves well above their real station in life, causing nothing but confusion and uncertainty
Women, as usual, were expected to behave better than men, and inevitably attracted criticism for doing things that men were licensed to do with impunity.
There are indeed ducks in Blackford Pond. On it, muttered Isabel. What? On the pond. There are ducks on the pond. There are fish in it. Even as she spoke, Isabel had no idea why she was being so pedan...
The whole culture of work had become so intrusive and demanding that people had to do it. And the result was that they were left with little time for simply living their lives, for going for a walk, f...
That was the way the world was; it was composed of a few almost perfect people (ourselves); then there were a good many people who generally did their best but were not all that perfect (our friends a...
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. People want to b...
Some people mocked you if you said that you joined others when your time came. Well, they could laugh, those clever people, but we surely had to hope, and a life without hope of any sort was no life:...
She had muttered the words without realising, as unintentionally as she had said co-director. It was a worrying prospect: if one started to say what one was thinking, the results could be very embarra...
Perhaps her shoes would say something; Mma Makutsi had told her once, jokingly— and she have been joking— told her that her shoes occasionally gave her advice. Well, perhaps they could tell her not t...
Our possessing of our world is a temporary matter: we stamp our ownership upon our surroundings, give familiar names to the land about us, erect statues of ourselves, but all of this is swept away, so...
It's really rather easy to write eighth-century Chinese poetry, said Angus Lordie. In English, of course. It requires little effort, I find.
It was inconsiderate not to have a gardener if, like Dr Ranta, you were in a well-paid white-collar job. It was a social duty to employ domestic staff, who were readily available and desperate for wor...
But that miracle would eventually arrive, as it always had, and the landscape would turn from brown to green within hours under the kiss of the rain. And there were other colours that would follow the...
A man could be a hereditary ruler, or an elected president, but not be a gentleman, and that would show in his every deed. But if you had a leader who was a gentleman, with all that this meant, then y...