To the Land of Long Lost Friends Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Indeed, it was so easy to make anybody happy. All that was required was a kind word or two—a kind word that cost nothing, and yet could have such a profound effect.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, To the Land of Long Lost Friends

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Ask anybody what their idea of heaven is, and the answer will reveal that person’s soul.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, To the Land of Long Lost Friends

“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

“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

“Kindness, after all, did not distinguish between those who merited it and those who did not. It was like rain, she thought. It fell everywhere and made everything green and new and alive once more. That is what it did.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, To the Land of Long Lost Friends

“We were all different, she thought, and it was important to remind oneself of that. It was important, too, to imagine what it must be like to be another person. That was a simple thing to do, and its effect could be salutary.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, To the Land of Long Lost Friends

“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, on the whole it was better to say kind things of late people, even if they did not fully deserve them. Kindness, after all, did not distinguish between those who merited it and those who did not. It was like rain, she thought. It fell everywhere and made everything green and new and alive once more. That is what it did.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, To the Land of Long Lost Friends

“People have been becoming more traditionally built over recent years,” he had pointed out.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, To the Land of Long Lost Friends

“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

“Sometimes the truth can’t be put on anybody’s bill,” Mma Makutsi pronounced, and then continued, “but it’s still important to get to it, Mma—to get to the truth behind all the…all the things that cover up the truth.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, To the Land of Long Lost Friends

“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

“Mma Ramotswe would often stop and look at the sky; and this just went to show how wise she was, because looking at the sky was something that we all should do more often.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, To the Land of Long Lost Friends

“How could we tell what we had to do, because we were very small, really, and our feet were stuck on the ground, and we could not see very far? And then the answer came. It had been there all along, of course, and she had always known it: we knew what we had to do because there were all those people, our ancestors, who had faced exactly the same problems as confronted us, and who had worked out what was the right thing to do. We only had to listen. We only had to close our eyes and wait for their voices to come to us on the wind, perhaps, or in the stillness of the night. That was all we had to do.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, To the Land of Long Lost Friends

“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

“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