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69ae4a9
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And here, she said to herself, is the victim of the witch hunt, or its modern equivalent. Not much has changed. Witchcraft or sexual harassment: the tactics of persecution were much the same - the loathed enemy was identified and then demonised.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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ad04d98
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You can hear the train in those lines; you can feel its rocking motion.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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bded46d
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How many of us dig our own graves, thought William. We dig them with vigour and determination, unaware of the implications, but with all the conviction of those who do not really know what they are doing, who are impervious to the dangers that others can see so clearly.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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8df2e16
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A dog sees no point in dwelling on things that have happened; the important thing is that they are not happening now. In that respect, they have something to teach us: we so often feel that then is now, and this leads us to prolong the suffering of yesterday into the suffering of today. Dogs do not do that.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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9ccfc66
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Everybody was a potential assailant; nobody spoke to one another for fear of being misinterpreted; nobody comforted another, put an arm around a shoulder-to do so would be to invite accusation.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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85d44c0
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Has he not got a wife back wherever he comes from? Is there no wife to say, 'You must not go off and visit library ladies'?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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e4deb4e
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How often have I noticed or, indeed, listened to him? We talk, but do I actually listen, or is our conversation mainly a question of my waiting for him to stop and for it to be my turn to say something? For how many of us is that what conversation means - the setting up of our lines?
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listening
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a2ed4a6
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She imagined what it must be like to have Charlie's mind - to believe that red shoes are faster then other shoes; to believe, as he did, that ducks could drive fire engines and that pigs built houses out of bricks and straw. There were plenty of people who weren't three-and-three-quarters who believed equally implausible things...and when to war over them.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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0143c91
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People caused harm to others because they were of malevolent disposition, that was shear human wickedness. something that has always existed and always would.Some people it seemed derived pleasure from inflicting suffering on others...
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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c729207
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You did not squeeze hands when you lied; it could not be done.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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0be87f1
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In fact, none of us knows how he ever managed to get his LLB in the first place. Maybe they're putting law degrees in cornflakes boxes these days.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2b6a3f9
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Already many of the memories of the previous two weeks had faded: the smell of that small hotel in St. Andrews; that mixture of bacon cooking for breakfast and the lavender-scented soap in the bathroom; the air from the sea drifing across the golf course; the aroma of coffee in the coffee bar in South Street. She should have noted them down. She should have said something about all that and the light and the hills with sheep on them like sm..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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bea69e2
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She did not think that those who were late, or the ancestors themselves, would wish punishment upon us, no matter what our transgressions. It was far more likely that there would be love, falling like rain from above, changing the hearts of the wicked; transforming them
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love
forgiveness
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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956956d
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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 front of their desks when they could be adding up figures or checking the drivers' returns?
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work-hard
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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980c0ee
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The trouble with the world today, she thought, was that people were not prepared to stand up to bad behaviour.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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1ccb671
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Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which come back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are. And who am I?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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01fd073
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She was, in fact, often wrong--and knew it. Life became difficult when those who were often wrong did know it.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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febefaa
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It was all very well being a modern society, but the advent of prosperity and the growth of the towns was a poisoned cup from which one should drink with the greatest caution. One might have all the things which the modern world offered, but what was the use of these if they destroyed all that which gave you strength and courage and pride in yourself and your country?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a291506
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For a moment, Isabel's eyes met those of someone looking out of the window, a thin-faced woman with her hair done up in a bun. The woman began a smile, but stopped, as if conscious of somehow transgressing the conventions of isolation with which as city-dwellers we immure ourselves. The bus moved on, and zisabel felt a sudden desire to run alongside it, to wave to the woman, to aknowledge the unexpected exchange of fellow feeling between th..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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391b897
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Isabel is looking at several collections of research journals. 'She would understand the issues if she chose to open one of the volumes, but she knew that there were conversations within which she would never have the time to participate in. And that, of course, was the problem with any large collection of books, whether in a library or a bookshop: one might feel intimidated by the fact that there was simply too many to read and not know wh..
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library
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a426090
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The readers of Isabel's journal were affected by the conversations within its covers-if nothing else, the livingroom of their moral imagination became bigger. And this must surely have some bearing on the way they dealt with the world, even in the small transactions of life: awareness of the pain of others here, a word of comfort there. Of course, the admission of kindness to one's life did not spring from any contimplation of the views of ..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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6c6554d
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Metaphors were so bloody: people shot messengers,, flogged dead horses, cut the throats of their competitors. Perhaps that was life; perhaps that's what it was really like.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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83eaea1
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How could a very thin woman do all the things that women needed to do: to carry children on their backs, to pound maize into flour out at the lands or the cattle post, to cart around the things of the household--the pots and pans and buckets of water? And how could a thin woman comfort a man? It would be very awkward for a man to share his bed with a person who was all angles and bone, whereas a traditionally built lady would be like an ext..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2176e42
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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 whether you went to Mass or to a tub-thumping Protestant chapel. It was a result of the movement of people. The Protestant planters--many of them Scots--replaced the native Irish, remember? Movement of people again."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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39e4ebf
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what is one thing today becomes quite another thing tomorrow.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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6a01a95
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That place is the place we have always been, and if you think that where you have been is where you should be, then why go to another place that you do not know at all and may not be as good as the place you were in before somebody came along and said to you that you must go forwards--which is not what you wanted to do?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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fe21e66
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And it was young men in red cars who were the most dangerous of all. Such people were best given a wide berth, both in and out of the car.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7b81844
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good things that we have in life are on temporary loan, at best, and can be taken away from us in an instant. The borderline between good fortune and disaster, between plenitude and paucity, between the warm hearth of love and the cold chamber of loneliness, was a narrow one. We could cross over from one to the other at any moment, as when we stumbled or fell, or simply walked over to the other side because we were paying insufficient atten..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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de58863
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The queue for happiness was not well ordered, he thought; it stretched out and wound round corners, and sometimes, it seemed, the end was so hard to see.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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e7e4d7c
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There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.
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mycologists
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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f7238dd
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There were plenty of people who did not really believe in God, but who wanted to believe in him, and said that they did. Some people said that these people were foolish, that they were hypocritical, but Mma Ramotswe was not so sure about that. If something, or somebody, could help you to get through life, to lead a life that was good and purposeful, did it matter all that much if that thing or that person did not exist? She thought it did n..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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369a904
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there was always a part of the human mind that was prepared to entertain such notions, particularly at night, in the world of shadows, when there were sounds that one could not understand and when each one of us was in some sense alone.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7d0ae97
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And the difference was this, she mused: those who are twenty don't know what it is like to be forty, whereas those who are forty know what it is like to be twenty. It was a bit like discussing a foreign country with somebody who has never been there. They are prepared to listen, but it's not quite real for them.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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e87dbfc
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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 be left alone to look after their cattle.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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831d89c
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What is beauty, she thought, but the promise of happiness, as Stendhal said it was?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b01e6e4
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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 the doctor gave me. The only thing that makes me sad is that I shall be leaving Africa when I die.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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f91ab91
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Whisky nosers, as they called themselves, eschewed what they saw as the pretentiousness of wine vocabulary. While oenophiles resorted to recondite adjectives, whisky nosers spoke the language of everyday life, detecting hints of stale seaweed, or even diesel fuel.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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1aa9436
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it was difficult to think what to do, and, as she often did in such circumstances, Mma Ramotswe decided that the best thing to do would be to go shopping.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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df42973
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You haven't offended me at all. You've made me think. That's all.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b38c4fd
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But we cannot always choose whose lives will become entangled with our own; these things happen to us, come to us uninvited, and Mma Ramotswe understood that well.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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015de01
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Perhaps trust had to be accompanied by a measure of common sense, and a hefty dose of realism about human nature. But that would need a lot of thinking about, and the tea break did not go on forever.
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trust
thinking
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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1fa0fd6
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Writers just play out their fantasies in their books. They are often very unstable, tricky people, Bertie. Writers are usually very bad at real life and feel that they have to create imaginary lives to make up for it.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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78b6663
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Lions walk on four legs," observed Mma Makutsi. "Was this man walking on four legs? That can be a big giveaway, Mma."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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0aa721a
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All cats are grey in the dark, he had written in one chapter. So remember that how much you can see of a situation depends on how much light you can shine upon it.
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Alexander McCall Smith |