Alexander McCall Smith Quotes

Alexander McCall Smith Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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...

It's really rather easy to write eighth-century Chinese poetry," said Angus Lordie. "In English, of course. It requires little effort, I find.

So it was perfectly possible that there were men who liked shopping, men who understood exactly what it was all about, but Mma Ramotwe had yet to meet such a man. Maybe they existed elsewhere - in France, perhaps - but they did not seem to be much in evidence in Botswana.

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.

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.

She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.

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

We put on our walls what we think is beautiful or inspiring, and if others think that it is manufactured or shallow, then they need not have it on their walls.

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.

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

Neighbours are given to us on the same basis as we are given our families. There is no element of choice involved - none at all.

Mma Ramotswe decided to go back into her office. There was a curious thing about male conversation that she had noticed - men often ended up poking fun at one another. Women did this only rarely, but men seemed to love insulting one another. It was very strange.

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.

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.

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.

The forges of friendship, thought Angus, may be busy ones, but their dorrs are always open.

...they are dazzled by all the money that they are being offered. That is what money does, Mma Ramotswe - you must have seen that. Sometime we need to look the other way when people put money in front of our noses. We have to look at the other things we can see so the money doesn't hide them.

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.

The language of Cat's generation was far harder than that of her own, and more pithily correct: in their terms, he was a hunk. But why, she wondered, should anybody actually want a hunk, when non-hunks were so much more interesting?

Men are very sensitive, Mma Makutsi. You would not always think it to look at them, but they are. They do not like you to point out that they are wrong, even when they are. That is the way things are, Mma-it just is.

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.

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

Our stomachs live in towns," said Mma Potokwani, patting the front of her dress. 'That is where the work is. Our stomachs know that. But our hearts are usually somewhere else.

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