Alexander McCall Smith Quotes

As a writer, I have readers who will have a range of political views. I don't think they look to me for political guidance.

But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?

It was easy to be moral when that was the way you felt anyway. The hard bit about morality was making yourself feel the opposite of what you really felt.

Writers obviously have to bear witness to the harsh face of the age.

If you lose sight of the smaller accomplishments , you end up with an imbalance in your life.

To lose a child ... was something that could end one's world. One could never get back to how it was before. The stars went out. The moon disappeared. The birds became silent.

Self-pity does not appreciate pedantry.

I cannot see myself in a new car. I am a tiny white van person. That is what i want!

If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.

That my philosophy of life is, as far as possible, one of enjoyment. I'm not nihilistic.

Botswana is actually very peaceful. It's democratic. It never was in debt. They've been fortunate, they've had diamonds.

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

I just focus on getting the first scene right, with a few lines about the overall plot, and then the book grows organically.

I am often thanked by people for inventing the term traditionally built. The people who give me thanks for this are often traditionally built themselves.

I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own.

I am capable of being idle.

I enjoy women's conversation, and I think that helps me to describe them in fiction.

Life consists of positive and negative features, and I think that it is permissible to write about both.

Some of my characters are a mixture of various aspects of people I have met. others are pure invention.

I write four or five a books a year. That means that I usually have one on the go. I am fortunate in being able to write quickly - 1000 words an hour.

Painters aren't expected to paint bleak pictures, are they?

New York is a wonderful place to be up, an awful place to be down.

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

Do not take on a traditionally built person unless you are prepared for a heavyweight bout.

My parents were very supportive and always encouraged us. My father was a gentle, nice man. My mother was quite a colourful character and a keen reader who encouraged me to write.

Edinburgh used to be a haughty city.

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.

It's a different sort of love taht puts up with illness. Old love.

I have three older sisters, so we were a reasonably large family and, in general, a happy one.

I am easily persuaded to continue to have fun.

The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle.

Many of my books are written from a female perspective. I rather enjoy the take that women have on the world, and certainly I enjoy the conversations that women have.

I've always had a creative urge and I get immense satisfaction from creating something because it feels like I'm making sense of the world and imposing order on it.

Ritual is a terribly important, binding cement in a society. If we abandon formality and rituals, we're actually weakening the relationships that exist between people that bind.

Has anyone sen Mr Snark " "I saw him in the tunnel about 15 minutes ago." "Oh no " wailed Dr Ferman "he will have been atomised." "Oh dear" muttered an MP. "Bye-election.

We shall change all that...because it is possible to change the world, if one is determined enough, and if one sees with sufficient clarity just what has to be changed.

Mr Mandela, who had given his whole life for justice and had never once thought of himself. How unlike these people were modern politicians, who thought only of power and tricks.

Human history seems to me to be one long story of people sweeping down—or up, I suppose—replacing other people in the process.

The ordinary people of Africa tended not to have room in their hearts for hatred. They were sometimes foolish, like people anywhere, but they did not bear grudges, as Mr Mandela had shown the world.

If she was going to remain an engaged lady, then she would make the most of it, and one of the ways to do this would be to enjoy her free time.

He evidently did not care that they were in full view of a cluster of dog-owners walking their dogs. He stopped and took her in his arms, kissing her passionately and urgently.

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

…the world was a vale of tears—it always had been.

Mma Ramotswe reflected on how easy it was to find oneself committed to a course of action simply because one lacked the courage to say no.

Myth could be as sustaining as reality - sometimes even more so.

The recipe for each child is just for that child, even if it is the same mother and father.

A moral dilemma is equally absorbing whether the stakes are the destiny of nations or the happiness of one or two people - at the most.

But he'll never be fully recognised, because Scots literature these days is all about complaining and moaning and being injured in one's soul.

Perhaps trust had to be accompanied by a measure of common sense, and a hefty dose of realism about human nature. But that would need a lot of thinking about, and the tea break did not go on forever.

Boys, men, " she said. "They're all the same. They think that this [their manhood] is something special and they're all so proud of it. They do not know how ridiculous it is.