Alexander Mccall Smith Quotes
Collection of top 100 famous quotes about Alexander Mccall Smith
Alexander Mccall Smith Quotes & Sayings
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Everybody knows, she thought, that we have a skeleton underneath our skin; there's no reason to show it
— Alexander McCall Smith
People stuck by others for years and years, in the face of all odds, and it should be relief, not disbelief, that one felt on witnessing it.
— Alexander McCall Smith
There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out.
— Alexander McCall Smith
When you don't talk about something, then something will talk about itself for you.
— Alexander McCall Smith
She had a great respect for books herself, and she wished that she had read more. One could never read enough. Never.
— Alexander McCall Smith
A society that undermined its teachers and their authority only dug away at its own sure foundations.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Myth is a cloud based upon a shadow based upon the movement of the breeze.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Simple questionsand simple answers
were what we needed in life. That was what Mma Ramotswe believed. Yes. — Alexander McCall Smith
Talking about pumpkins doesn't make them grow.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Everything could always be worse,' she would say, 'and so be grateful that things are only as bad as they are.' She
— Alexander McCall Smith
We must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and manifold though they be.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Mma Makutsi had overheard this remark and had been so cross that her glasses misted over; that was always a bad sign, Mma Ramotswe knew.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Well, that's the important thing, isn't it, Mma? To feel happiness, and then to remember it.
— Alexander McCall Smith
that weddings are far more than marriage ceremonies; we know that they are occasions for family stock-taking and catharsis; that
— Alexander McCall Smith
A woman sees more than a man sees. That is well-known.
— Alexander McCall Smith
He agreed with David Hockney that an artist really had to be able to draw before anything else could be achieved.
— Alexander McCall Smith
I am easily persuaded to continue to have fun.
— Alexander McCall Smith
The recipe for each child is just for that child, even if it is the same mother and father.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Painters aren't expected to paint bleak pictures, are they?
— Alexander McCall Smith
Time, she felt, made quite enough claims on us, without our conniving in its relentless tyranny.
— Alexander McCall Smith
It was a voice that you felt you had to listen to - or you ignored at your peril.
— Alexander McCall Smith
from that, there was nothing.
— Alexander McCall Smith
A kind word, a word of encouragement or admiration, could shift the heaviest, most recalcitrant baggage.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Let's not have a sniffle, let's have a jolly good cry And always remember, the longer you live, the sooner you jolly well die.
— Alexander McCall Smith
There were times when life's problems were convincingly outweighed by its possibilities, and this, she felt, was one.
— Alexander McCall Smith
But then men do not see things the same way we do, she thought. They have different eyes.
— Alexander McCall Smith
the finding of a cargo of whisky was, in a sense, like the finding by the Israelites of manna in the wilderness. And
— Alexander McCall Smith
International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.
— Alexander McCall Smith
The unmerited dislike of another made one think less of oneself. We are enlarged by the love of others; we are diminished by their dislike.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Small things may be important to us; to be a sometime anything is sometimes something.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Words can make big things little, you know.
— Alexander McCall Smith
The world is full of twenty-year-olds, she thought, all of them blind. Obed
— Alexander McCall Smith
A very powerful theme in fiction is that of loss.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Are we facing a new Dark Age, Angus? Possibly, Lou. A dark age in which our concentration spell is this long.
— Alexander McCall Smith
If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.
— Alexander McCall Smith
It would be wonderful, she thought, to write a book which would help other people.
— Alexander McCall Smith
But some of us cannot see love, she said to herself, even when it is there, right before us, asking us to invite it in.
— Alexander McCall Smith
We are very keen to disapprove.
— Alexander McCall Smith
The Okavango Delta is an astonishing sight: the great Okavango River, rather than flow towards the sea, flows inland, into the sands of the Kalahari.
— Alexander McCall Smith
I have the luxury, I suppose, of being self-employed. But I know what it's like to apply for jobs.
— Alexander McCall Smith
All the good things that we have in life are on temporary loan, at best, and can be taken away from us in an instant.
— Alexander McCall Smith
We change the earth and our changes may only be temporary; yet the signs of what we have done may persist, as these mounds did.
— Alexander McCall Smith
You have to leave your heart to get on with it. It's rather like breathing. We don't have to remind ourselves to breathe.
— Alexander McCall Smith
One of the drawbacks to being a philosopher was that you became aware of what you should not do, and
— Alexander McCall Smith
Martha simply did not know that virtually everything she said was inappropriate, and so there was no point in remonstrating with her.
— Alexander McCall Smith
There may be no book on the mothers of poets, or artists in general, but it might one day be written and would be, I think, an enlightening read.
— Alexander McCall Smith
It is the onion, memory, that makes me cry, he said.
— Alexander McCall Smith
With '44 Scotland Street' I found myself having to work out how a daily novel works, and it is completely different to a conventional novel.
— Alexander McCall Smith
That is important," said Mma Makutsi from behind her desk. "One does not want a lady who talks too much.
— Alexander McCall Smith
It was safer, he thought, to keep it to himself; because there are many ways of loving.
— Alexander McCall Smith
It's a different sort of love taht puts up with illness. Old love.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Now the tea began to do its work- as it always did- and the world that only a few minutes previously had seemed so bleak started to seem less so.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Has he not got a wife back wherever he comes from? Is there no wife to say, 'You must not go off and visit library ladies'?
— Alexander McCall Smith
People with something to hide wore sunglasses indoors. They were the ones you had to watch very carefully.
— Alexander McCall Smith
The night is a very bad time for questions to which there are no answers." Mr Badule looked at her. "You are very right, my sister. There is
— Alexander McCall Smith
of day it was or how we were feeling, they were
— Alexander McCall Smith
Who can't like pigs? They're wonderful creatures! I've always liked pigs.
— Alexander McCall Smith
I cannot see myself in a new car. I am a tiny white van person. That is what i want!
— Alexander McCall Smith
Political scandals, economic disaster, suffering in all its familiar forms - these were the daily staple of a disaster-prone, uneasy planet.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Special things have a way of surviving.
— Alexander McCall Smith
I've also long since realized that the way to really engage children is to give out prizes; it's amazing how it concentrates their minds.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Many people only go to see other people when they want to ask for some favour.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Women are the ones who knows what's going on,' she said quietly . 'They are the ones with eyes. Have you not heard of Agatha Christie?
— Alexander McCall Smith
But only if youses shift yoursels and get in. He used the demotic plural of you, a common feature of speech in Scotland.
— Alexander McCall Smith
It was always disconcerting to meet those who had become so obsessed with a single topic that they could not see their concerns in context.
— Alexander McCall Smith
I'm interested in character and dialogue and exchange of ideas.
— Alexander McCall Smith
This is a city of shifting light, of changing skies, of sudden vistas. A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again.
— Alexander McCall Smith
You can't have a cohesive society without a shared culture.
— Alexander McCall Smith
As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Serial novels have an unexpected effect; they hook the writer as well as the reader.
— Alexander McCall Smith
It's really rather easy to write eighth-century Chinese poetry," said Angus Lordie. "In English, of course. It requires little effort, I find.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Any author of fiction will tell you that characters don't need to be told what to do.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Writing fiction, I really just sit there and it just comes.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Was particularly hard for women now, when there were so many children left without
— Alexander McCall Smith
It was a pink sort of smell- a smell that seemed to get bigger as you smelled it and then burst, just like the popping of a bubble
— Alexander McCall Smith
If we were all responsible for the misdeeds of the governments that represent us, thought Isabel, then the moral burden would be just too great.
— Alexander McCall Smith
To lose your own language was like forgetting your mother, and as sad, in a way.
— Alexander McCall Smith
People don't talk about mercy very much these days - it has a rather old-fashioned ring to it. but it exists and its power is quite extraordinary
— Alexander McCall Smith
You can't deceive your own mother. That's the one person, the only one, to whom you will always be transparent.
— Alexander McCall Smith
I have three older sisters, so we were a reasonably large family and, in general, a happy one.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Portraiture has its risks, and I suppose a dissident Free Presbyterian fatwa is one of them.
— Alexander McCall Smith
There are so many things we take in subconsciously and are unaware we ever saw. There is plenty of lumber like that in our minds.
— Alexander McCall Smith
All of us had a view from somewhere
— Alexander McCall Smith
... the world was a vale of tears - it always had been.
— Alexander McCall Smith
forgiveness of others allows us to adjust our feelings towards the past, assuages our anger. Our
— Alexander McCall Smith
Anthropology, she thought, like charity, surely begins at home.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Oh I love gadgets and I pride myself on keeping at the cutting edge of technology.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Loving others, she thought, is the good thing we do in our lives.
— Alexander McCall Smith
There are so many ways of falling off the high moral ground you've carefully built up for yourself. Moral ground is like that - slippery at the edges.
— Alexander McCall Smith
You are a lucky lady to be marrying a man who can fix things. Most husbands just break things.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Africa had a way of coming back and simply covering everything up again.
— Alexander McCall Smith
The rules of the jungle did not apply to those who wrote the rules of the jungle.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Remember that, she said to herself; remember that in your dealings with others - they may be dying.
— Alexander McCall Smith
A nudist? In Edinburgh? Does he realise what parallel we're on?
— Alexander McCall Smith
The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Violins sang, brass crowed, while bassoons, she felt, rumbled according to a Richter scale all of their own. Charlie
— Alexander McCall Smith
Contemplating this vast human suffering, you might be tempted to shrug your shoulders, but you could not.
— Alexander McCall Smith
The danger, of course, is that we spend time imagining that we would be happier elsewhere, and forget to cultivate happiness where fate has placed us.
— Alexander McCall Smith
Manfred's interventions, he thought, had all the characteristics of radio jamming, designed to stop anybody else talking.
— Alexander McCall Smith
DOING THE DONKEY WORK
— Alexander McCall Smith