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25224fd
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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 had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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d1e6182
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Why? Why is there a crisis in literature? Because of lies and rottenness. Simplicity and sincerity have been replaced by obsfucation and pretense. Men, of course. They love to create mystery where none exists. It's the way they think.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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02ea592
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Blocks of flats could change everything, thought Mma Ramotswe. They were designed for people, but people were not necessarily designed for them. These flats at the edges of the Village, though, were made more human by the washing that was hung out to dry from their balconies; by the children who congregated in their doorways, or played with skipping ropes and dogs on their pathways; by the music that the residents listened to, melodies that..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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159a7b7
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Chapter Eleven She did not spend long in the supermarket at Riverwalk, confining her purchases to supplies she would need for the next few days. There was beef for stew, a large pumpkin, a packet of beans, a dozen eggs, and two loaves of bread. The pumpkin looked delicious--almost perfectly round and deep yellow in colour, it sat on the passenger seat beside her so comfortably as she drove out of the car park, so pleased to be what it was, ..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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6354e7d
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we must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and manifold though they be.
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humanity
love
failings
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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5ea7c1e
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But shall we inspect what we see beyond?" he went on. "Please, after you..." Elspeth thought: I am so fortunate. I am married to a man who says "Please, after you." How fortunate is that? And she thought of a friend who did not even have a husband, although she dearly would have loved one, and how her life would be transformed, would be made perfect, if she had one who said, "Please, after you" or indeed by one who did not even say that, wh..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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faf2f1d
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Human history seems to me to be one long story of people sweeping down--or up, I suppose--replacing other people in the process.
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history
human-history
history-repeating-itself
history-of-mankind
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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54e95ce
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She was, he reflected, one of his closest friends, in a rather curious, slightly old-fashioned way.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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170ba07
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Stand on your toe. That is what one said in Setswana if one hoped that something would happen. It was the same as the expression which white people used: cross your fingers.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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cf77c4d
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People don't talk about mercy very much these days--it has a rather old-fashioned ring to it. but it exists and its power is quite extraordinary
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mercy
power
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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5bc2cd5
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If you knew what is was like to be another person, then how could you possibly do something which would cause pain? The problem, though, was that there seemed to be people in whom that imaginative part was just missing. It could be that they were born that way--with something missing from their brains--or it could be that they became like that because they were never taught by their parents to sympathise with others.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7ff0cd0
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Of course you could not allow yourself to think too much about these issues. One had to get on and to attend to the day-to-day business of living.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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384490e
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Like ageism and sexism, lookism was everywhere, resulting in the good-looking getting the best jobs, winning all the plaudits, being let off the most parking tickets by soft-hearted traffic wardens; being generally favoured.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b5e2b37
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It was a pink sort of smell- a smell that seemed to get bigger as you smelled it and then burst, just like the popping of a bubble
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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73fde13
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There was a great deal of progress being made, right under their noses, particularly in Africa, and this progress was good. Life was much harder for tyrants than it had been before.
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alexander-mccall-smith
progress
life
tyrants
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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1847f6a
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Words that are full of hurt sometimes need to be left in the air where they have been spoken.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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6736eb3
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We were tiny creatures, really; tiny and afraid, trying to hold our place on the little platform that was our earth. So while the world about us might seem so solid, so permanent, it was not really. We were all at the mercy of chance, no matter how confident we felt, hostages to our own human frailty.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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e6832d4
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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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a3af56c
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We do not talk about wise men or wise ladies any more, she reflected; their place had been taken, it seemed, by all sorts of shallow people--actors and the like--who were only too ready to pronounce on all sorts of subjects.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a7b64ef
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There are so many things we take in subconsciously and are unaware we ever saw. There is plenty of lumber like that in our minds.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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9507b2c
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Crisis. It was a time of sustained anxiety for anybody who read a newspaper or listened to the news on the radio, and that included his mother, Mrs. Florence Woodhouse, who was anxious at the best of times and even more so at the worst. What was the point of continuing the human race when nuclear self-immolation seemed to be such a real and imminent possibility? That was the question that occurred to Florence as she was admitted to the deli..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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201d491
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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 new ones, from another distant place or from right next door. Old lies were replaced by new ones, backed up by old threats.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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f71bf78
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It is very difficult sometimes to keep upright.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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eaa5e10
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Yes. Look at the way in which a little boy plays. He prods. He investigates things all around him. He moves them. He tries to push them over. Then look at girls. They touch things gently. They watch them. They don't try to push them about. They..." She searched for the right word. "They cherish them." The"
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7a71081
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It is not at all foolish to hope for miracles,
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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1858578
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The winds must come from somewhere when they blow...There must be reasons why the leaves decay. (From Auden's "If I Could Tell You"
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leaves
winds
wind
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2950fa3
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she imagined what it would be like to live with somebody who had secrets. Instead of a comfortable atmosphere of trust there would be a nagging insecurity, like a corrosive crust, eating away at the fabric of the marriage. Doubts would spread like weeds, making it impossible to relax, spoiling everything.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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d80bcce
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Pat wondered what inspiration an artist might find in the attempts of twenty-first-century architects to impose their phallic triumphs on the cityscape. Had any artist ever painted a contemporary glass block, for instance, or any other product of architectural brutalism that had laid its crude hands here and there upon the city?...If a building did not lend itself to being painted, then surely that must be because it was inherently ugly, wh..
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contemporary-architecture
edinburgh
contemporary-art
architecture
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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be2e9c0
|
They are a bit small for me, Mma," she confessed. "I think you were right. But I felt great happiness when I wore them, and I shall always remember that. They are such beautiful shoes." Mma Ramotswe laughed. "Well, that's the important thing, isn't it, Mma? To feel happiness, and then to remember it." "I think that you're right," said Mma Makutsi. Happiness was an elusive thing. It had something to do with having beautiful shoes, sometimes;..
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happiness
shoes
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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dfe5189
|
When Emma was five, Mrs. Woodhouse died. Emma did not remember her mother. She remembered love, though, and a feeling of warmth. It was like remembering light, or the glow that sometimes persists after a light has gone out.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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1671a2c
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I suppose that's the way affairs come to an end. Somebody grabs a fork and stabs the other in the hand. And that's it
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heartbreak
love
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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efc7e8c
|
In such a way is freedom of thought lost... By small cuts. By small acts of disapproval. By a thousand discouragements of spirit.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b6e56f6
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If you punish somebody harshly, she said, then you are simply inflicting more pain on the world. You are also punishing not only that person, but his family and the people who love him. You are punishing yourself, really, because we are all brothers and sisters in this world, whether we know it or not; we are all citizens of the same village.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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facc375
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French philosophers had been able to admire Mao and his works because they did not have to live in China at the time.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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64f29ae
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When somebody does wrong, Emma, we must remember that that person is still a human being like the rest of us. We must not rush to throw the first stone. We must remind ourselves that all of us do wrong from time to time, unless we're saints, which we aren't.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b0361a9
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It was not edifying to dwell on the failings of others.
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edification
edifying
failings
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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699e01d
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Mma Ramoswe shaded her eyes with a hand. "All that work," she mused. "And now this." Mma Potsane shrugged her shoulders. "But that is always true, Mma," she said. "Even Gaborone. Look at all those buildings. How do we know that Gaborone will still be there in fifty years' time? Have the ants not got their plans for Gaborone as well?" Mma Ramotswe smiled. It was a good way of putting it. All our human endeavors are like that, she reflected, ..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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99e9d7e
|
We were all people--men and women--and you could never say that one group of people was less important than another.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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847715c
|
Places had echoes- and if one were sensitive, one might just pick up some resonance from the past, some feeling for what had happened.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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9e57637
|
The night is a very bad time for questions to which there are no answers." Mr Badule looked at her. "You are very right, my sister. There is"
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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3acfb69
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Late people do not altogether leave us, she thought; they are still with us in memories such as that, wherever we are, no matter what time of day it was or how we were feeling, they were there, still shining the light of their love upon us.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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670d8de
|
We forget, she thought. We think that we were always the way we are now, but we were not. --
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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db43c81
|
The whole point about childhood," Domenica went on, "is that it affords us a brief moment of innocence and protection from the pressures of the world. Parents who push their children too hard intrude on that little bit of space."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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d1cff2e
|
It is such an easy thing to do--to touch another in sympathy--but it is such a hard thing too.
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sympathy
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Alexander McCall Smith |