Such was human progress; and to think that they were even talking now about filing papers in something called the Cloud. She was not sure how good an idea that would be in a country like Botswana,...

But emotions and detective work did not always mix; there was something about that in Clovis Andersen's The Principles of Private Detection. What had he said? Emotions have the same effect as a magnet...

It is better to tell people good things, Mma-if you can.

Offering a lady a chair was one way of showing that this work was appreciated, and that strength and brute force-at which men generally tended to excel-was not the only thing that counted. Respect for...

Families come in different ways... sometimes they are given to you, but sometimes you find them yourself, unexpectedly, as you go through life.

A sleeping partner?" "That's it. I always thought that was an odd expression, Mma. I always thought of a sleeping partner as being somebody who sat with his head on his desk and slept.

the names we gave to others, and the things we accused them of, often said more about us than they did about them.

There were three chairs on the verandah-comfortable old wooden chairs that probably dated from Protectorate days. The British brought chairs, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni once said. They took chairs with them...

MMA RAMOTSWE observed speed limits for two reasons. One of these was that she believed that laws were there to be obeyed, and that if everybody drove as fast as they liked there would be mayhem on the...

Anybody in any employment in Botswana was expected to engage somebody to help in the house. There was nothing extravagant about this; it was, in fact, a form of sharing: if you had a job, you had...

Cattle had no vote, nor the words to express a view, but their feelings ranked above just about everything else in the country.

My old friend," he began, "is down below, his face we'll see no more, for what he thought was H2O was H2SO4

you did not look for a winner who would take everything; you found a way of allowing people to save face; you found a way of healing rather than imposing.

we don't see our parents as people. Your daddy was also a man-a very good man too-but he was a man.

her daddy, as she called him, and of whom she thought at some point every day, every single day, and whom she had loved with all her heart.

Problems have a way of solving themselves.

It is very difficult sometimes to keep upright.

The husband should say to the reverend: 'And I promise not to defy my wife.

Not forgiving was like scratching at a sore to keep the healing scab from forming.

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...

Nobody is so bad that there is no chance of change.

We've all had that sort of experience," said Mma Ramotswe. "Every one of us, Mma. We've all had a first day at school, or a first day in a new job. We've all been unsure what to do.

Forgiveness was never easy, but Mma Ramotswe believed in it because she knew that without forgiveness we cluttered our lives with old business.

Inside every one of us, thought Mma Ramotswe, there is the child we once were, the child that was unsure about the world and our place in it.

Those images of those old places, the places you come from, never completely disappear. They remain with you, those scraps of memory; those pictures somewhere in your mind of how things were, of what...