Simple questions--and simple answers--were what we needed in life. That was what Mma Ramotswe believed. Yes.

We think the world is ours forever, but we are little more than squatters.

And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice - based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudices and muddled folk wisdom - how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right!

It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.

When you allow people to do what they wish, then that is what they do. They stop doing the things they need to do.

As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved.

Lou knew that joy unshared was a halved emotion, just as sadness and loss, when borne alone, were often doubled.