J. L. B. Smith Quotes

Any author of fiction will tell you that characters don't need to be told what to do.

I'm very interested in tea. I wouldn't mind being involved in some aspect of the tea industry.

It would be wonderful to have a guru; it would be like having a social worker or a personal trainer, not that people who had either of these necessarily appreciated the advice they received.

Each of us is born into our own mysteries but the mystery of another might just take us in and embrace us. And then what a sense of homecoming, of belonging!

But you cannot expect every writer to dwell on human suffering. I think my books do deal with grave issues. People who say they are too positive probably havent read them.

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.

A thought may be very commendable as a thought, but I value it chiefly as a window through which I can obtain insight on the thinker.

If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business. It is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death.

Every day travels toward death; the last only arrives at it.

It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some single irradiating word.

Fine phrases I value more than bank-notes. I have ear for no other harmony than the harmony of words. To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.

We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.

In my garden, care stops at the gate and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.

An old novel has a history of its own.

Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse. If we attempt to steal a glimpse of its features it disappears.

To-day is always different from yesterday.

The spot of ground on which a man has stood is forever interesting to him.