The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, r. Jul. 2013

p. 18 I told him that if a man is born in a dry place, then although he may dream of rain, he does not want too much, and that he will not mind the sun that beats down and down. So I never went with him to Zululand and I never saw the sea, ever. But that has not made me unhappy, not once.

p. 20 That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left along to look after their cattle.

p. 160 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. All the familiar objects of her daily life looked as if they belonged to somebody else, somebody called Mma Ramotswe, who was not quite the person walking about in pink slippers.

p. 162 What use was it having all that money if you could never sit still or just watch your cattle eating grass? None, in her view; none at all, and yet they did not know it.