" Mma Ramotswe smiled at her old friend. You can go through life and make new friends every year -- every month practically -- but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.
She reached out and touched Dr. Maketsi on the arm, gently, as old friends will sometimes do when they have nothing more to say. "
― Alexander McCall Smith , The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency