3146960
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Out in Saxe-Coburg Street she stood still for a moment and looked at the gardens. He kissed me, she thought. He made the move; I didn't. The thought was an overwhelming one and invested the everyday world about her, the world of the square, of trees, of people walking by, with a curious glow, a chiaroscuro which made everything precious. It was the feeling, she imagined, that one had when one vouchsafed a vision. Everything is changed, beco..
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kiss
love
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Alexander McCall Smith |
077f573
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She felt that she had revealed something to Cat, and with revealing something about oneself there always comes a sense of lightening of the load that we all carry; the load of being ourselves.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
d1bc722
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It's a different sort of love taht puts up with illness. Old love.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
43702b1
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She had to tell somebody, and Matthew would do. He would not be particularly interested, she knew, but she would tell him anyway. She had to share her joy, as Lou knew that joy unshared was a halved emotion, just as sadness and loss, when borne alone, were often doubled.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
e2121bf
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because love can come, if you believe in it and behave as if it exists. That was the case, too, with free will; with perhaps, fath of any sort; and love was a sort of faith, was it not?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
6b4b9db
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Mma Ramotswe was right: evil repaid with retribution, with punishment, had achieved half its goal; evil repaid with kindness was shown to be what it really was, a small, petty thing, not something frightening at all, but something pitiable, a paltry affair.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
4995603
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I am blessed and being blessed is something more than just having something. It is a state of mind in which the good of the world is illuminated, it's understood. It is as if one is vouchsafed a vision of some sort, a vision of love, of 'agape', of the essential value of each and every living thing.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
607169f
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We must not eat dripping any more,' warned Mma Makutsi from behind a healthy living magazine. 'We must give up such things, Mma.' This advice had been accompanied by a stern look in Mma Ramotswe's direction. Mma Ramotswe had not taken that lying down. 'Soon they will be telling us not to eat anything,' she countered. 'They will say that only air is good for you. Air and water.' Mma Makutsi had not approved. 'You cannot fight science, Mma. S..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
d4f6d30
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We do not like those who are completely available, who make themselves over to us entirely. They crowd us out. They make us feel uneasy.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
7647a69
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the real poison within families is not the poison that you put in your food, but the poison that grows up in the heart when people are jealous of one another and cannot speak these feelings and drain out the poison that way.
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poison
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Alexander McCall Smith |
a5bbbba
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And the problem was that there was a positive epidemic of narcissism, encouraged by commercial manipulation and by the shallow values of Hollywood films. And interestingly enough, the real growth area was male narcissism.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
b6f6f41
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It was while teaching at this school that Auden experienced the vision that lay at the heart of "A Summer Night." He later wrote about it in these words: One fine summer night in June 1933 I was sitting on a lawn after dinner with three colleagues, two women and one man. We liked each other well enough but we were certainly not intimate friends, nor had any one of us a sexual interest in another. Incidentally, we had not drunk any alcohol. ..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
11e35ab
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How remarkable it was, she thought, that we managed to anchor ourselves at all in this world, and that we did so by giving ourselves names and linking those names with places and other people.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
d021045
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Plenty of people were writing novels; in fact, if one did a survey in the street, half of Edinburgh was writing a novel, and this meant that there really weren't enough characters to go round. Unless, of course, one wrote about people who were themselves writing novels. And what would the novels that these fictional characters were writing be about? Well, they would be novels about people writing novels.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
e006cef
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Lightning always strikes in the same place twice," said Mma Ramotswe. "Whatever people say to the contrary."
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Alexander McCall Smith |
0511543
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Most problems could be diminished by the drinking of tea and the thinking through of things that could be done while tea was being drunk. And even if that did not solve problems, at least it could put them off for a little while, which we sometimes needed to do, we really did.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
6c87eac
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You cannot divide a child's heart in two" she had observed to Mma Makutsi, "and yet that is what some people wish to do. A child has only one heart." "And the rest of us?" Mma Makutsi had asked. "Do we not have one heart too?" Mma Ramotswe nodded. "Yes, we have only one heart, but as you grow older you heart grows bigger. A child loves only one or two things; we love so many things." "Such as?" Mma Ramotswe smiled. "Botswana. Rain. Cattle. ..
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Alexander McCall Smith |
53291cb
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The Morning After Coffee Bar was different from the mass-produced coffee bars that had mushroomed on every street almost everywhere, a development which presaged the flattening effects of globalisation; the spreading, under a cheerful banner, of a sameness that threatened to weaken and destroy all sense of place.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
7373c81
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She shook her head. What was the point of anger? There were occasions when Mma Ramotswe, like all of us, could feel angry, but they were few - and they never lasted long. Anger, Obed Ramotswe had explained to her once, is no more than a salt that we rub into our wounds. She had never forgotten that - along with the things he said about cattle, and Botswana, and the behaviour of the rains.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
9b897f0
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The language of Cat's generation was far harder than that of her own, and more pithily correct: in their terms, he was a hunk. But why, she wondered, should anybody actually want a hunk, when non-hunks were so much more interesting?
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Alexander McCall Smith |
59a8b00
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Matthew knew that phrenology was nonsense, and yet, years later, he found himself making judgments similar to those made by his father; slippery people looked slippery; they really did. And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice - based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudiced and muddled folk wisdom - how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this ..
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parents
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Alexander McCall Smith |
1d4ecc5
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Everything is possible in love. In the heart of each of us there can be many rooms, and sometimes there are.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
e2a7256
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You say that you lost your child. You know how I feel then. You know that, don't you? It's a sadness that never goes away.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
69fb866
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There was no word for self-pity in the language of the north-east of Scotland - the nearest being a word which is defined in the Scots dictionary as being 'a term used to express self-reproach on paying too much for something.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
ab33c47
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That, incidentally, gives me the greatest possible pleasure--the knowledge that we are all linked by our friendship with a group of fictional people. What a pleasant club of which to be a member! [from the preface; on writing for people around the world]
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reading
writing
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Alexander McCall Smith |
17596c9
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For each of us, she thought, there is out completeness in another. Whether we find it, or it finds us, or it eludes all finding is a matter of moral luck.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
3fe387a
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She hoped that her baby was happy and would be waiting for her when she herself left Botswana and went to heaven. Would Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni get round to naming a wedding date before then? She hoped so, although he certainly seemed to be taking his time. Perhaps they could get married in heaven, if he left it too late. That would certainly be cheaper.
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heaven
marriage
ramotswe
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Alexander McCall Smith |
bec9af2
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There were two classes of persons upon whom a duty of virtually absolute confidentiality rested: doctors and lovers.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
245c735
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Myth is a cloud based upon a shadow based upon the movement of the breeze.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
a01f89a
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Brother Fox looked in. He saw two people. He saw them raise their glasses of wine to him, liquid that for him was suspended in the air, as if by a miracle.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
7dce315
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The only thing that makes me sad is that I shall be leaving Africa when I die. I love Africa, which is my mother and my father. When I am dead, I shall miss the smell of Africa
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Alexander McCall Smith |
3b56e4a
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Dear friends, he began, there is no timetable for happiness; it moves, I think, according to rules of its own. When I was a boy I thought I'd be happy tomorrow, as a young man I thought it would be next week; last month I thought it would be never. Today, I know it is now.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
12d20a5
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Mr. J.L.B Matekoni," she asked, "do you think that our souls grow as we get older?" He did not answer immediately, but when he did, she thought his answer quite perfect. "Yes," he said. "Our souls get wider. They grow like the branches of a tree--growing outwards. And more birds come and make their homes in these branches. And sing a bit more." He stopped and looked a little awkward. "I'm talking nonsense, Mma." "You're not," she said."
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soul
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Alexander McCall Smith |
209233a
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We needed resentment, he said, as it was resentment which identified and underlined the wrong. Without these reactive attitudes, we ran the risk of diminishing our sense of right and wrong, because we could end up thinking it just doesn't matter.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
f49be3f
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What do the Texans say? All hat, no cattle.
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boasting-quotes
texas
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Alexander McCall Smith |
f204fa2
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There were few other passengers: a man in an overcoat, his head sunk against his chest; a couple with arms around each other, impervious to their surroundings; and a teenage boy with a black scarf wound round his neck, Zorro-style. Isabel smiled to herself: a microcosm of our condition, she thought. Loneliness and despair; love and its self-absorption; and sixteen, which was a state all its own.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
0c264a5
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Which is how most people acted when it came to temptation. They gave in. And we should never forget, thought Isabel, that every one of us is capable of doing the same thing if the game that we see for ourselves is large enough.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
8666e30
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It was easy to make a difference to other people's lives, so easy to change the little room in which people lived their life.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
da2d66b
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Then there was Mr Mandela. Everybody knew about Mr Mandela and how he had forgiven those who had imprisoned him. They had taken away years and years of his life simply because he wanted justice. They had set him to work in a quarry and his eyes had been permanently damaged by the rock dust. But at last, when he had walked out of the prison on that breathless, luminous day, he had said nothing about revenge or even retribution. He had said t..
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heart-of-africa
humanity
mandela
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Alexander McCall Smith |
98a91f8
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The Germans had a word for everything--a word that could be very focused, very specific, because it could be constructed for a precise set of circumstances. They even had a word, it was said, for the feeling of envy experienced when one sees the tasty dishes ordered by others in a restaurant and it is too late to change one's own order. , meal envy, she believed that was the word--if it existed at all. ... could well catch on because man..
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humorous
meal-envy
restaurant-dining
restaurant-meal
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Alexander McCall Smith |
e0969f6
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The young rarely believe that they will not be able to get what they want, because there is always an open future.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
d86a439
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It is my duty to help them solve the mysteries in their lives. That is what I am called to do.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
16cb065
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We need a person whom we can make our little god on this earth, as the old Kgatla saying had it. Whether it was a spouse, or a child, or a parent, or anybody else for that matter, there must be somebody who gives our lives purpose.
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Alexander McCall Smith |
0aa4482
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Men can be teenagers until well into their twenties. That is well known
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teenagers
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Alexander McCall Smith |