Alexander McCall Smith Quotes

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

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 is room in history for all of us.

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

Manners are the basic building blocks of civil society.

Talking about pumpkins doesn't make them grow.

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

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?

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

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

I have always taken the view that one should never hold against a man anything he says after twelve o'clock at night or after a glass or two of anything.

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

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...

There is plenty of work for love to do.

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

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.

None of us knows how we will cope with snakes until the moment arises, and then most of us find out that we do not do it very well.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Well, Id say all of us are a combination of moods and emotions. In my day to day life I dont go around skipping, but at times one can feel sheer exhilarating joy at the world.

A very powerful theme in fiction is that of loss.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.

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.

At night we are all strangers, even to ourselves.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

I am easily persuaded to continue to have fun.