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To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20) QUOTES

To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20) QUOTES

1 " My brothers and my sisters. Those words, as simple and direct as they were, never failed to resonate with her. They were words that said so much about how people should feel about one another. When you addressed others as your brothers or your sisters, you professed something deep and essential about how you felt towards them. You were saying We are not strangers to one another. You were reminding them, and yourself as well, of your shared humanity. You were not claiming to be anything more than they were; you were not claiming any advantage or chance of advantage. You were saying: Here I am, as I am, and I am speaking to you, as you are, as a brother or a sister must speak to one with whom he or she was brought up, from whom no secrets would be hidden, to whom no untruths would be told. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

2 " How can you have a peaceful country where one half of the population thinks that the other is wrong, or hostile, or determined to do them down? What better recipe for unhappiness was there than that? "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

3 " Mma Ramotswe had expected no thanks for what she had done. You helped other people—you just did. Had her van broken down, then she would have hoped that somebody would have done the same for her, and she thought that they would. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

4 " Mma Ramotswe said that she thought it wrong to threaten people in any circumstances. Threats were no more than the verbal expression of the violence that she had always disliked so much. As was swearing, which was another form of violence, even when it was directed against the world in general rather than an individual target. She did not like that, and yet it seemed to her that people now resorted to it so casually, as if it was nothing exceptional. What were they like inside, she asked herself, these people who used such language all the time; what were they like inside? "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

5 " It is always the same, Mma Makutsi—every time. Exactly the same. So now I know what that guy says without needing to read his book.” This was heresy, and for a few moments Mma Makutsi was almost too shocked to respond. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

6 " she had not had the time to love her children, because all her energy was spent in simply keeping them alive. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

7 " people who believed not that the end was coming—as some people did—but that it had actually come, and we had simply failed to notice "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

8 " a cloud of dust thrown up behind her white van like the vapour trail of a high-flying aircraft, "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

9 " We should be happy when people have chairs,” he admonished. “We should be happy, even if we do not have a chair ourselves. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

10 " But she had never once regretted what she had done under the influence of tea, and would not start doing so now. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

11 " The more that people are in the wrong, she thought, the louder their protestations on being brought to book. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

12 " Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had been uncertain what to say. He wondered whether he should ask Mma Ramotswe why she had not consulted him, but decided against it. If husbands started to question their wives’ decisions, then where would it end, and what purpose would it serve? You could not undo what your wife had done. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

13 " It was far better to accept what had happened and make the best of it. It was also the case, he reflected, that Mma Ramotswe usually got her way. She was so nice about it, so disinclined to be insistent or pushy, but she usually got him to do what she wanted—and he was happy enough about that when all was said and done. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

14 " And the same goes for other things,” went on Mma Makutsi. “Hooks are the answer.” Mma Ramotswe had a momentary vision of Mma Makutsi’s house covered in hooks. Even her baby, Itumelang, would be suspended in a basket from a hook; and Phuti would have a hook too, a large, solid one, from which he would dangle by his collar, awaiting instructions from his wife. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

15 " You know how they leave their things lying around on the floor.” Mma Ramotswe, in spite of her commitment to fairness, had to agree. Men were very untidy, for the most part. They could not help it, she knew, and one could not blame them for it, as neither could they help being men. It was just the way things were. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

16 " She decided to change the subject. Hooks were useful, but there was a limit to what one could say about them. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

17 " Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni waited. If a woman was unhappy, in his experience this could mean that there was a badly behaved man in the background. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

18 " But when all was said and done he thought that there was something beyond us, something other than the human, and that if you closed your eyes and thought about this thing long enough you could hear its voice within you. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

19 " Mr J. L. B. Matekoni thought that she was right. He was not a man with a very sophisticated theology, and there were times when he had his serious doubts. But when all was said and done he thought that there was something beyond us, something other than the human, and that if you closed your eyes and thought about this thing long enough you could hear its voice within you. That was enough for him. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)

20 " People have been becoming more traditionally built over recent years,” he had pointed out. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , To the Land of Long Lost Friends (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #20)