Barbara said to herself: Oh, please, please, please! Please let nothing go wrong with this—this wildly improbable, impossible, but gorgeous thing. She was not sure to whom to address this invocation....
Back home in Arbroath, they had thought that she was just a girl–she had heard one of her male relatives say just that–and that somebody who was just a girl had nothing really important to say about a...
All our human endeavours are like that, she reflected, and it is only because we are too ignorant to realize it, or are too forgetful to remember it, that we have the confidence to build something tha...
You can lose a piece of plain bread and not think twice about it, but when you lose one spread thickly with strawberry jam it's an altogether more serious matter.
Why, she asked herself, why keep a wound open when forgiveness can close it?
What else do you need in life, Mma? You have a fine husband—which is one of the most important things that anybody can have.
We chose younger and younger politicians to lead us because they looked good on television and were sharp. But really we should be looking for wisdom, and choosing people who had acquired it; and such...
That young man will go far, she said. I don’t know in what direction, but he will go far.
Sometimes wickedness prevails.
Sometimes it seemed as if the world itself was broken, that there was something wrong with all of us, something broken in such a way that it might not be put together again; but the holding of hands,...
She would give him the benefit of the doubt, as she always did: her experience had taught her that the names we gave to others, and the things we accused them of, often said more about us than they di...
She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.
She had always worked as hard as she could, at everything she did, and she simply did not understand how anybody could do otherwise. How could they sit there, as they did, and stare into the space in...
Mma Ramotswe tucked the cheque safely away in her bodice. Modern business methods were all very well, she thought, but when it came to the safeguarding of money there were some places which had yet to...
I’m very glad that Matthew phoned, he said. I’ve been out of touch, you know. It’s like that out here. You get caught up in your own life and you forget about family back home.
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 had to eat y...
And he readily admitted that he knew nothing about women's clothing, as most men would have to admit; and yet women always claimed to know what clothes were right for a man. There was some injustice h...
And Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was at that moment on the verge of an exceptionally important thought, even though its final shape had yet to reveal itself. How much easier it was for Mma Ramotswe—she put thi...
Charming people, when not actively shooting one another, a friend had once said, which was so unkind, but, like so many unkind comments, had a grain of truth in it. They shoot one another and had bee...
But you cannot expect every writer to dwell on human suffering. I think my books do deal with grave issues. People who say they are too positive probably haven't read them.