Fragmentos - Bertie's guide to life & mothers

They went through to the dining room. In most places people move into rooms rather than through to rooms, but not in Edinburgh where they move through, just as they go through to Glasgow while Glasgow people go across to Edinburgh. People in Scotland go down to London, and Londoners go up to Scotland, which is not surprising, bearing in mind the way the map looks (when held the right way up) (...)

Intoxication, in his experience, disclosed a person's true nature. Nice people were nice when they had taken too much to drink; nasty people were nasty. What had Domenica said about Auden? Hadn't she said something about his views on the weather that could be applied here? He racked his brains and yes, that was it: nice weather is what nice people were nice about and nasty weather was what nasty people were nasty about. It was such a peculiar thing to say -  at least at first  blush - and yet it was, Angus decided, so true. People giving to moaning about things in general moaned about the weather; people not giving to moaning took an optimistic view of a darkening sky. Darkening skies could - and did - lighten. Rain fell, but then stopped falling; wind gusted, but also petered out (...)

Angus closed his eyes and tried to imagine the moral high ground. It would look, he thought, rather like som of the higher ground in a Renaissance painting - an idealised, Italianate landscape of cypress trees and distant blue hills. Of course, the moral high ground would be somewhat crowded by now, given the number of people who sought to occupy it. He smiled at the thought. And smiled again when he thought of what a good name it would be for a house. Retired philosophers, for instance, could name ther villas that, and certain, but not all, politicians might do the same (...)

'Yes, there is comfort,' she said. 'Because what's the alternative? A belief that life is without meaning, without purpose? If we consider our position . our real position . what are we? A life form on this tiny rock hurtling about in space - perhaps even a hologram if some theories are to be believed.' She paused to talke a sip of a coffee. 'But, however samll and insignificant we are in a cosmic context, one thing that we do understand is what we have consciousness and that we are capable of certain emotions. We like some things and dislike others. We feel happy or unhappy. We experience pain and pleasure. These are facts.' (...)

Bertie's guide to life and mothers - Alexander McCall Smith