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The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18) QUOTES

The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18) QUOTES

1 " Those images of those old places, the places you come from, never completely disappear. They remain with you, those scraps of memory; those pictures somewhere in your mind of how things were, of what the sun looked like when it shone through the window of your childhood room and caught floating specks of dust in its rays; of how you looked up at the ceiling above your sleeping mat; of the faces of an aunt or a grandparent or a friend; of all the things that once were, in that place that was home to you then, and perhaps are no longer. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

2 " Inside every one of us, thought Mma Ramotswe, there is the child we once were, the child that was unsure about the world and our place in it. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

3 " Forgiveness was never easy, but Mma Ramotswe believed in it because she knew that without forgiveness we cluttered our lives with old business. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

4 " We’ve all had that sort of experience,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Every one of us, Mma. We’ve all had a first day at school, or a first day in a new job. We’ve all been unsure what to do. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

5 " Nobody is so bad that there is no chance of change. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

6 " She would give him the benefit of the doubt, as she always did: her experience had taught her that the names we gave to others, and the things we accused them of, often said more about us than they did about them. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

7 " Not forgiving was like scratching at a sore to keep the healing scab from forming. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

8 " The husband should say to the reverend: ‘And I promise not to defy my wife. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

9 " She smiled at the memory. Her father, her dearest daddy, had become late many years ago now, but she still thought of him every day. Now she remembered his words about ‘the look’ and reminded herself that she used that expression about people, too. Some people had ‘the look’ and others did not. It was something to do with confidence, she thought. You had the look if you knew who you were, what you were doing, and why you were doing it. That bull had the look because he knew that he was good at being a Brahman bull; he knew what was expected of him, and he was not plagued by any doubts. Doubts were the enemy of the look – that was very clear. If you were not sure that you should be doing what you were doing, it showed – and you then became one of those who did not have the look. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

10 " It is very difficult sometimes to keep upright. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

11 " Problems have a way of solving themselves. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

12 " her daddy, as she called him, and of whom she thought at some point every day, every single day, and whom she had loved with all her heart. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

13 " we don’t see our parents as people. Your daddy was also a man—a very good man too—but he was a man. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

14 " you did not look for a winner who would take everything; you found a way of allowing people to save face; you found a way of healing rather than imposing. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

15 " My old friend,” he began, “is down below, his face we’ll see no more, for what he thought was H2O was H2SO4 "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

16 " Cattle had no vote, nor the words to express a view, but their feelings ranked above just about everything else in the country. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

17 " Anybody in any employment in Botswana was expected to engage somebody to help in the house. There was nothing extravagant about this; it was, in fact, a form of sharing: if you had a job, you had money, and money needed to be spread around. The people who helped in the house were often paid a pittance and expected to work long hours, but they were desperate for any job and were pleased to take on what came their way. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

18 " MMA RAMOTSWE observed speed limits for two reasons. One of these was that she believed that laws were there to be obeyed, and that if everybody drove as fast as they liked there would be mayhem on the roads. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

19 " There were three chairs on the verandah—comfortable old wooden chairs that probably dated from Protectorate days. “The British brought chairs,” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni once said. “They took chairs with them wherever they went in the world. And they left the chairs behind when they went home. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)

20 " the names we gave to others, and the things we accused them of, often said more about us than they did about them. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The House of Unexpected Sisters (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #18)