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53613ae
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Sorry about your sausage dog.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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6f6c1d8
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He looked at her in the darkness, at this woman who was everything to him-mother, Africa, wisdom, understanding, good things to eat, pumpkins, chicken, the white sky across the endless, endless bush, and the giraffe that cried, giving its tears for women to daub on their baskets; O Botswana, my country, my place.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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dc91d77
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The house seemed so different at night. Everything was in its correct place, of course, but somehow the furniture seemed more angular and the pictures on the wall more one-dimensional. She remembered somebody saying that at night we are all strangers, even to ourselves, and this struck her as being true.
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unfamiliar
strangers
strange
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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713c013
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How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment?...only the completely happy think that they are in the correct place.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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597ee55
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Mma Ramotsew accepted her large slice of cake and looked at the rich fruit within it. There were at least seven hundred calories in that, she thought, but it did not matter; she was a traditionally built lady and she did not have to worry about such things.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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89ca346
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Boys, men," she said. "They're all the same. They think that this [their manhood] is something special and they're all so proud of it. They do not know how ridiculous it is."
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men
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b5f0aea
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But that's exactly the problem, retorted Isabel. We're all stuck with the same tired and trusted ideas. If we refused to entertain the possibility of something radically different, then we'd never make any progress - ever. We'd still be thinking that the sun revolved round the earth.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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0a396c9
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The point about love, the essential point, was that we loved what we loved. We did not choose. We just loved.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7b76627
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Sometimes she thought that the people overseas had no room in their heart for Africa, because nobody had ever told them that African people were just the same as they were
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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1514c72
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Isabel had firm views on moral proximity and the obligations it created. WE cannot choose the situations in which we become involved in this life; we are caught up in them whether we like it or not. If one encounters the need for another, because of who one happens to be, or where one happens to find oneself, and one is in a position to help, then one should do so. It was as simple as that.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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77b72bd
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Isabel observed an etiquette of the telephone: a call before eight in the morning was an emergency; between eight and nine it was an intrusion; thereafter calls could be made until ten in the evening, although anything after nine-thirty required an apology for the disturbance. After ten one was into emergency time again.
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telephone-calls
telephone-etiquette
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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65cc47b
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She's sociopathic. She will have no moral compunction in doing whatever is in her interests. It's as simple as that.
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sociopaths
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7681be5
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People stuck by others for years and years, in the face of all odds, and it should be relief, not disbelief, that one felt on witnessing it.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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dfbc4cb
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She knew that she had a tendency to allow her mind to wander, but surely that's what made the world interesting. One thought led to another, one memory triggered another. How dull it would be, she thought, not to be reminded of the interconnectedness of everything, how dull for the present not to evoke the past, for here not to imply there.
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interconnectedness
daydreaming
memory
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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122bfc2
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Many waters cannot quench love: the anthem's setting remained in her ears, repeating itself; a tune so powerful that it might gird one against the disappointments of life, rather than make one aware that our attempts to subdue the pain of unrequited love - of impossible love, of love that we are best to put away and not to think about - tended not to work, and only made the wounds of love more painful.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a23d26b
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The danger, of course, is that we spend time imagining that we would be happier elsewhere, and forget to cultivate happiness where fate has placed us.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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2bf82ed
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We can't afford to be without God," Feliks continued. "Even if he doesn't exist, we have to hold on to him. Because if we don't, then how are we to convince ourselves that we have to go on with this fight? If you take God out of it, then right and justice become small, human things. And weak things, too."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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b091d58
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We can be confident in our dealings with the world when what the world sees is the outer person, with all the outer person's defences: the intimacy of a love affair is a different matter altogether. And who might not feel just the slightest bit insecure under the gaze of a lover--a gaze which falls on birthmarks, on blemishes physical and psychological, on our imperfections and impatience, on our human vulnerability?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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285376b
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We were the Bechuanaland Protectorate then, and the British ran our country, to protect us from the Boers (or that is what they said). There was a Commissioner down in Mafikeng, over the border into South Africa, and he would come up the road and speak to the chiefs. He would say: "You do this thing; you do that thing." And the chiefs all obeyed him because they knew that if they did not he would have them deposed. But some of them were cle..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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08c365f
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this woman, moved by some private sorrow as much as the words being spoken, cried almost silently, unobserved by others, apart from Mma Ramotswe, who stretched out her hand and laid it on her shoulder. , she began to whisper, but changed her words even as she uttered them, and said quietly, . We should not tell people not to weep - we do it because of our sympathy for them - but we should really tell them that their tears are justified an..
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sorrow
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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4ca4adb
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International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.
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economics
quality
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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703c6ca
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If you take God out of it, then right and justice become small, human things. And weak things too.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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1f6c9a4
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It was a pointed sigh, as sighs sometimes are, not one cast into the air to evaporate, but one calculated to descend, precisely and with great effect, on a target.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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bf44ae9
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There was far too much interest in the past, she thought. People were forever digging up events that had taken place a long time ago. And what was the point in doing this if the effect was merely to poison the present?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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65e0bed
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We like to think that we plan what happens to us, but it is chance, surely, that lies behind so many of the great events of our lives -- the meeting with the person with whom we are destined to spend the rest of our days, the receiving of a piece of advice whic influences our choice of career, the spotting of a particular house for sale; all of these may be put down to pur chance, and yet they govern how our lives work out and how happy--or..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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504e2a8
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There was so much suffering in Africa that it was tempting just to shrug your shoulders and walk away. But you can't do that, she thought. You just can't.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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9ce6dc1
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Everybody knows, she thought, that we have a skeleton underneath our skin; there's no reason to show it
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a30967d
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a drive in the country, an expedition to a shoe shop a quiet cup of tea under a cloudless sky; each of us had something that made it easier to continue in a world that sometimes, just sometimes, was not as we might wish it to be.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a21c2d8
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There was nothing more unattractive than narcissism, she thought: nothing could transform beauty into a cloying, unattractive quality than that self-conscious appreciation of self.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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87555d5
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There was no need for words, for there are times when words can only hint at what the heart would wish to say.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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ca4ae77
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Look at those clouds," said Jamie, gazing up at the sky. "Look at them." "Yes," said Isabel. "They're very beautiful, aren't they? Clouds are very beautiful and yet so often we fail to appreciate them properly. We should do that. We should look at them and think about how lucky we are to have them." "Look at the shape of the clouds," she said. "What do you see in those beautiful clouds, Jamie?" "I see you," he said."
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isabel-dalhousie
clouds
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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ffc82d1
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Myth could be as sustaining as reality - sometimes even more so.
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reality
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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c82d0c8
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These sociopaths,' he said. 'What do they feel like? Inside?' Isabel smiled. 'Unmoved,' she said. 'They feel unmoved. Look at a cat when it does something wrong. It looks quite unmoved. Cats are sociopaths, you see. It's their natural state.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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6a54cb3
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That, said Isabel, is the most painful feature of lost love. you wonder what the other person is doing. Right at this moment. What is he/she doing?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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fe233a4
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A wedding was a strange ceremony, she thought, with all those formal words, those solemn vows made by one to another; whereas the real question that should be put to the two people involved was a very simple one. Are you happy with each other? was the only question that should be asked; to which they both should reply, preferably in unison, Yes.
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wedding
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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e701499
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Talking about pumpkins doesn't make them grow.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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688e1d1
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She had argued for a broad interpretation, which imposed a duty to answer questions truthfully, and not to hide facts which could give a different complexion to a matter, but on subsequent thought she had revised her position. Although she still believed that one should be frank in answers to questions, this duty arose only where there was an obligation, based on a reasonable expectation, to make a full disclosure. There was no duty to reve..
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disclosure
lying
truth
information
questions-and-answers
facts
questions
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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a6ba8de
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If we treated others with the consideration that one would give to those who only had a few days to live, then we would be kinder, at least.
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kindness
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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0530f05
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Isabel saw the intimacy of the gestures and felt immediately empty, a sensation so physical and so overwhelming that she felt for a moment that she might stop breathing, being empty of air
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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69d426c
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No plaque reminds the passer-by of these glories, although there should be one; for those who invent biscuits bring great pleasure to many.
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humour
wisdom
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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aec3806
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Do I shock you? I think I do. That's the problem these days - nobody speaks their mind. No, don't smile. They really don't. We've been browbeaten into conformity by all sorts of people who tell us what we can and cannot say. Haven't you noticed it? The tyranny of political correctness. Don't pass any judgement on anything. Don't open your trap in case you offend somebody or other.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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4e3ac28
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We are born to talk to other people, ... we are born to be sociable and to sit together with others in the shade of the acacia tree and talk about things that happened the day before. We were not born to sit in kitchens by ourselves, with nobody to chat to." Mma Ramotswe"
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7a7c0f0
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Daughters could survive a powerful mother, but boys found it almost impossible. Such boys were often severely damaged and spent the rest of their lives running away from their mothers, or from anybody who remotely reminded them of their mothers; either that, or they became their mothers, in a desperate, misguided act of psychological self defence.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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7ad41d3
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Professor Dr Moritz-Maria Von Igelfeld often reflected on how fortunate he was to be exactly who he was, and nobody else. When one paused to think who one might have been had the accident of birth not happened precisely as it did, then, well, one could be quite frankly appalled.
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Alexander McCall Smith |