She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.

You do not have to ladle on the impasto to make a point about human frailty or ambitions.

I've certainly always had a very high regard for Botswana and so I paint a very good picture of the country and I've never pretended to be painting an entirely realistic picture.

Whisky nosers, as they called themselves, eschewed what they saw as the pretentiousness of wine vocabulary. While oenophiles resorted to recondite adjectives, whisky nosers spoke the language of everyday life, detecting hints of stale seaweed, or even diesel fuel.

What do the Texans say? All hat, no cattle.

However she redefined herself, that part of one that made for the core of the self, that part that we think of as the ultimate, inner being—that was ineradicable Scottish. That part spoke with a Scottish voice; that part looked out through Scottish eyes; and it was that part that now welled within her as she gazed out through the window of the descending plane and saw below her the rolling Borders hills…