Alexander McCall Smith quotes:

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

  • My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances; we've become the most famous bad orchestra in the world.

  • 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.

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

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

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

  • Manners are the basic building blocks of civil society.

  • Absurdly, irrationally, she believed that music could make a difference to the temper of the world.She did not investigate this belief, test it to see whether it made sense;she simply believed it, and so she chose music that expressed order and healing:Bach for order, Mozart for healing."

  • It seems to me that we're in danger of losing sight of certain basic civic values in society by allowing the growth of a whole generation of people who really have no sense of attachment to society.

  • I would certainly never consider myself a Renaissance Man; I'm not fit to look at the dust from the chariot wheels of many of those who have gone before me.

  • The local community is very important in one's life; the feelings of identification with a place and people.

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

  • Whatever Scotland was, it was not a matriarchy; whereas the United States was a profoundly matriarchal society - and much more feminine than would be suggested by all that male bravado. That was a front, and a misleading one at that; underneath the male swagger lay a passive acceptance of female dominance - a fact not always appreciated by outsiders.

  • The point of opera is that people are moved by the emotions and music.

  • 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 would never inflict my bassoon on anybody really other than the long suffering audiences that come to the concerts of The Really Terrible Orchestra; which actually is really terrible.

  • Serial novels have an unexpected effect; they hook the writer as well as the reader.

  • 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.

  • Antonia was very conscious of the corrosive power of envy and felt that it was this emotion, more than any other, which lay behind human unhappiness. People did not realize how widespread envy was.

  • Oh I love gadgets and I pride myself on keeping at the cutting edge of technology.

  • I think people in Botswana are pleased that my books paint a positive picture of their lives and portray the country as being very special. They've made a great success of their country, and the people are fed up with the constant reporting of only the problems and poverty of the continent. They welcome something which puts the positive side.

  • Baboons take a bit of getting to know but, apparently, once you break the ice, so to speak, they are complex and interesting creatures with elaborate societies.

  • Every single day, I get letters - very moving, overwhelming letters - testifying how much my books have meant to people in times of crisis in their lives, when they were very ill, say. If I ever doubted that writing could play an important part in people's lives, I don't doubt that now.

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

  • Who can't like pigs? They're wonderful creatures! I've always liked pigs.

  • Writing fiction, I really just sit there and it just comes.

  • I'm interested in character and dialogue and exchange of ideas.

  • There was nothing more unattractive than narcissism, she thought: nothing could transform beauty into a cloying, unattractive quality than that self-conscious appreciation of self.

  • She hoped that her baby was happy and would be waiting for her when she herself left Botswana and went to heaven. Would Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni get round to naming a wedding date before then? She hoped so, although he certainly seemed to be taking his time. Perhaps they could get married in heaven, if he left it too late. That would certainly be cheaper.

  • 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.

  • [Edinburgh] is a city of shifting light, of changing skies, of sudden vistas. A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again.

  • Edinburgh used to be a haughty city.

  • 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.

  • International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.

  • Most people want nothing to happen. That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left alone to look after their cattle.

  • One of the most destructive things that's happening in modern society is that we are losing our sense of the bonds that bind people together - which can lead to nightmares of social collapse.

  • The people with the strong, brave exteriors are just as weak and vulnerable as the rest of us. And of course they never admit to their childish practices, their moments of weakness or absurdity, and then the rest of us think that's how it should be.

  • You can go through life and make new friends every year - every month practically - but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.

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

  • It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.

  • There was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe -- the only lady private detective in Botwana -- brewed tea. And three mugs -- one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need?

  • As a writer I've learned certain lessons. One of them is to be careful about how you put a view, and to bear in mind how easily and readily you'll be misinterpreted.

  • Gracious acceptance is an art - an art which most never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving.... Accepting another person's gift is allowing him to express his feelings for you.

  • Men can be teenagers until well into their twenties. That is well known

  • we must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and manifold though they be.

  • You can hear the train in those lines; you can feel its rocking motion.

  • It's through the small things that we develop our moral imagination, so that we can understand the sufferings of others.

  • It was a stark choice: shoes or food; beauty or sustenance; the sensible or the self-indulgent. "I'll take the shoes," she said firmly.

  • It's because there are too many people who want to stop us having fun. That's the reason.

  • 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.

  • Well, I'd say all of us are a combination of moods and emotions. In my day to day life I don't go around skipping, but at times one can feel sheer exhilarating joy at the world.

  • The trouble with Grace, she thought, is that she is so literal. But that was the trouble with most people, when it came down to it; there were very few who enjoyed flights of fantasy, and to have that sort of mind--one which enjoyed dry with and understood the absurd--left one in a shrinking minority.

  • There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.

  • And then the second thing you have to do is go and see your son. That is a duty of love, Andrew. It's as simple as that. A duty of love. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?

  • Mma Ramotswe sighed. 'We are all tempted, Mma. We are all tempted when it comes to cake.'That is true,' said Mma Potokwane sadly. 'There are many temptations in this life, but cake is probably one of the biggest of them.

  • It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.

  • No plaque reminds the passer-by of these glories, although there should be one; for those who invent biscuits bring great pleasure to many.

  • Go to any small village anywhere in the world, and see what they remember. Everything. It's all there -- passed on like a precious piece of information, some secret imparted from one who knew to one who yearns to know. Taken good care of.

  • Emma was happy. She realized that happiness is something that springs from the generous treatment of others, and that until one makes that connection, happiness may prove elusive.

  • We act out our lives to a soundtrack, thought Isabel, the music that becomes, for a spell, out favourite and is listened to again and again until it stands for the time itself. But that was about all the scripting that we achieved; the rest, for most of us, was extemporising.

  • For a short while she considered the idea of orchestral courtesy. Certainly one should avoid giving political offence: German orchestras, of course, used to be careful about playing Wagner abroad, at least in some countries, choosing instead German composers who were somewhat more ... apologetic.

  • 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.

  • She did not think that those who were late, or the ancestors themselves, would wish punishment upon us, no matter what our transgressions. It was far more likely that there would be love, falling like rain from above, changing the hearts of the wicked; transforming them

  • If we treated others with the consideration that one would give to those who only had a few days to live, then we would be kinder, at least.

  • We think the world is ours forever, but we are little more than squatters.

  • There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out.

  • The wider your readership, the greater the chances of offending your readers.

  • 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 haven't read them.

  • Fiction is able to encompass books that are bleak and which dwell on the manifold and terrible problems of our times. But I don't think that all books need to have that particular focus.

  • Every novel presents a slice of life. A noir policier for example presents one slice, one that perhaps addresses social dysfunction or some sort of pathology, while mine present a slice that is more upbeat and affirmative.

  • 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.

  • I write four books a year. I'm very fortunate that I write quickly; around 3,500 words a day. Being strict about delineating my writing time and personal life, as well as keeping distractions at bay, is the only way I can accomplish this.

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

  • I am capable of being idle.

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

  • The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.

  • Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day; here I was happy, in that place I left my coat behind after a party, that is where I met my love; I cried there once, I was heartsore; but felt better round the corner..., things of that sort, our personal memories, that make the private tapestry of our lives.

  • The Culture of Complaint... We live in a culture of complaint because everyone is always looking for things to complain about. It's all tied in with the desire to blame others for misfortunes and to get some form of compensation into the bargain.

  • I see no point in being despondent. We might as well enjoy ourselves during our brief tenure of this life.

  • There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.

  • There is room in history for all of us.

  • There is plenty of work for love to do.

  • And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice - based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudices and muddled folk wisdom - how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right!

  • Reality television, which turned its eye on people who were doing nothing but being themselves, was the perfect expression of this trend [of narcissism]. Let's look at ourselves, it said. Aren't we fascinating?

  • Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself.

  • We don't forget.... Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which came back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are.

  • A very powerful theme in fiction is that of loss.

  • They're very beautiful, aren't they? Clouds are very beautiful and yet so often we fail to appreciate them properly. We should do that. We should look at them and think about how lucky we are to have them.

  • I think that we've made great moral progress in the second half of the 20th century in many respects, and particularly in relation to human rights but I think that we are losing sight of some of the values of concern for others, and self-respect and respect for others.

  • Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom...

  • Everybody has friends they dislike; people who they have slipped into relationships with, people they would not have chosen had they been more cautious, more circumspect.

  • 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.

  • When you allow people to do what they wish, then that is what they do. They stop doing the things they need to do.

  • At night we are all strangers, even to ourselves.

  • Small things may be important to us; to be a sometime anything is sometimes something.

  • Lou knew that joy unshared was a halved emotion, just as sadness and loss, when borne alone, were often doubled.

  • Dogs are in on our human silliness; lions are not.

  • It was the same with friendship. Disagreement between friends and spouses, too had to be carefully handled. If the time you spent with friends was consumed by disagreement, then there was no room for the essence of friendship, which was a sharing of the world. And that sharing involved seeing things the same way, or at least seeing things through the eyes of the friend.

  • My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances; weve become the most famous bad orchestra in the world.

  • Dating is really all about sex. In the conventional context, this means that the man invites the woman to go through a social encounter, the ultimate purpose of which is sexual engagement.

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

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

  • A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?

  • We should be careful of the insults we fling at others, lest they return and land at our feet, newly minted to apply to those who had first coined them.

  • How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment?...only the completely happy think that they are in the correct place.

  • We are all tempted, Mma. We are all tempted when it comes to cake.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Daughters could survive a powerful mother, but boys found it almost impossible. Such boys were often severely damaged and spent the rest of their lives running away from their mothers, or from anybody who remotely reminded them of their mothers; either that, or they became their mothers, in a desperate, misguided act of psychological self defence.

  • The good were worthy of note because they battled and that battle was a great story, whereas the evil were evil because of moral laziness, or weakness, and that was ultimately a dull and uninteresting affair.

  • It is not enough just to identify a problem; there are plenty of people who were very skilled at pointing out what was wrong with the world, but they were not always so adept at working out how these things could be righted.

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

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

  • We all know that it is women who take the decisions, but we have to let men think that the decisions are theirs. It is an act of kindness on the part of women.

  • The point about love, the essential point, was that we loved what we loved. We did not choose. We just loved.

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

  • That of all people, it should be him; that took her aback. That the heart should settle on somebody like him; that surprised her. But she was so certain about it, so certain.

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

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