How sorry she felt for white people, who couldn't do any of this, and who were always dashing around and worrying themselves over things that were going to happen anyway. What use was it having all...

The sun went, and it was dark. He sat beside her in the comfortable darkness and they listened, contentedly, to the sounds of Africa settling down for the night. A dog barked somewhere; a car engine...

He also spends a lot of my money on vitamin pills and biltong.

No sailor could be lonelier than a man standing in the middle of our land, with the miles and miles of blue about him.

And God was here anyway, before the missionaries came. We called him by a different name, then, and he did not live over at the Jews' place; he lived here in Africa, in the rocks, in the sky, in...

love was a form of blindness that closed the eyes to the most glaring faults. You could love a murderer, and simply not believe that your lover would do so much as crush a tick, let alone kill...

there was any number of men like that, waiting for an attractive girl that they could latch on to and whose life they could slowly destroy.

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.

and took us to the end of long, dark tunnels, which were filled with green rock and dust. My job was to load rock after it had been blasted, and I did this for seven hours a day. I grew

Boys, men," she said. "They're all the same. They think that this thing is something special and they're all so proud of it. They do not know how ridiculous it is.

We are the ones who first ploughed the earth when Modise {God} made it," ran an old Setswana poem. "We were the ones who made the food. We are the ones who look after the men when they are little...

...and with it would come that wonderful, unmistakable smell of rain, that smell of dust and water meeting that lingered for a few seconds in the nostrils and then was gone, and would be missed,...

But look at it now: a detective agency, right here in Gaborone, with me, the fat lady detective, sitting outside and thinking these thoughts about how what is one thing today becomes quite another...

The problem was, of course, that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded of this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves...

There are many words for push, take, shove, carry, load, and no words for love, or happiness, or the sounds which birds make in the morning.

love was a form of blindness that closed the eyes to the most glaring faults.

substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one

People with something to hide wore sunglasses indoors. They were the ones you had to watch very carefully.

The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for...

A woman sees more than a man sees. That is well-known.

You should have seen him," she said. "A real ladies' man. Stuff in his hair. Dark glasses. Fancy shoes. He had no idea how funny he looked. I much prefer men with ordinary shoes and honest trousers.

Everything, thought Mama Ramotswe, has been something before.

Mma Ramotswe decided to go back into her office. There was a curious thing about male conversation that she had noticed - men often ended up poking fun at one another. Women did this only rarely, but...

The world is full of twenty-year-olds, she thought, all of them blind. Obed

I do not think this is so, because there is no difference between white men and black men; we are all the same; we are just people.

It was curious how some people had a highly developed sense of guilt, she thought, while others had none.

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 be left...

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...

Some people cannot bear news like that. They think they must live forever, and they cry and wail when they realise that their time is coming. I do not feel that, and I did not weep at that news which...

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...