Karen
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Sunday, April 20 2008
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from The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall-Smith c. 2008 214 pages
9th in the #1 Ladies' Detective Agency series:
p. 96 "Sometimes it seemed as if the world itself was broken, that there was something wrong with all of us, something broken in such a way that it might not be put together again; but the holding of hands, human hand in human hand, could help, could make the world seem less broken."
p. 103 "There were so many decisions we made that at the time seemed very minor matters, but that could change the whole shape of our lives."
p. "She faltered. It was not easy to explain the hard side of things to a child, ot to anybody really. Mma Ramotswe would have wished the world to be otherwise, but it was not. She would have wished for the suffering of Africa to be relieved, to be legislated out of existence, but it seem htat htis would never be, for fundatment unfairness seemed to be a condition of human life. There were rich, there wer poor; and whilst one might rail agianst the injustices which kept people poor, it seemed that these were stubborn to the point of entrenchment. And in the meantime, whilst waiting for justice, or just for chance, what could one say ot the poor, who had only one life, one brief spell of time, and were spending their short moment of lfe in hardhip? An what could she say to Motholeli?"
p. 173 "What was money? Nothing. A human conceit, so much smaller a thing than love, and friendship, and the pursuit, no matter how pointless, of hope."
p. 175 "And yet that, surely, was what life was like. There would inevitably be certain days when htings changed dramtically--days when we received bad news or good, which could dictate te shape of the rest of our lives."
p. 205 "...evil repaid with retribution, with punishment, had achieved half its goal; evil repaid with kindness was shown ot be what it really was, a small, petty thing, ot something firghtening at all, but something pitiable, a palty affair