Alexander McCall Smith Quotes & Sayings

The problem was, of course, that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded of this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them and they would call that the right thing. — Alexander McCall Smith

Loving others, she thought, is the good thing we do in our lives. — Alexander McCall Smith

A large bird, a buzzard perhaps, was circling on high on a current of air, a tiny, soaring point of black, looking for food, of course, as all of us did, in one way or another. — Alexander McCall Smith

of the large numbers of people who applied for jobs, and she wondered how employers managed to select from such a wide field. Was everyone interviewed? And even if that happened, how did one distinguish one applicant from another when they all probably had roughly the same qualifications? — Alexander McCall Smith

When you are with somebody you love the smallest, smallest things can be so important, so amusing because love transforms the world, everything. And was that what had happened? — Alexander McCall Smith

Look at every territorial dispute you care to mention. Northern Ireland, for instance." "Religion in that case," Jamie ventured. "Not just. Religion was the badge of identity, but it wasn't really about whether you went to Mass or to a tub-thumping Protestant chapel. It was a result of the movement of people. The Protestant planters - many of them Scots - replaced the native Irish, remember? Movement of people again. — Alexander McCall Smith

Women are the ones who knows what's going on,' she said quietly . 'They are the ones with eyes. Have you not heard of Agatha Christie? — Alexander McCall Smith

Although she had only started being a detective, Precious was well aware that you had to be able to show people something if you wanted them to believe it. — Alexander McCall Smith

Protestations of happiness could sound almost boasting to those whose happiness is incomplete. One did not boast of perfect skin to one affected by dermatitis; for the same reason, perhaps, one should take care in proclaiming one's happiness. — Alexander McCall Smith

Mma Ramotswe had been understanding. Men who sired children and then failed to accept responsibility for them were anathema to her, and she reserved particular disapproval for those who then completely disappeared. She — Alexander McCall Smith

That, incidentally, gives me the greatest possible pleasure - the knowledge that we are all linked by our friendship with a group of fictional people. What a pleasant club of which to be a member! [from the preface; on writing for people around the world] — Alexander McCall Smith

... did it make a difference if the remark never got back to the person about whom it was made? She thought not. The harm is done when the words are uttered: that is the act of belittlement, the act of diminishing the other, and it is that act which would cause pain to the victim. You said that about me? The wrong was located in the making of the cruel remark, rather than in the pain it might later cause. — Alexander McCall Smith

And the problem was that there was a positive epidemic of narcissism, encouraged by commercial manipulation and by the shallow values of Hollywood films. And interestingly enough, the real growth area was male narcissism. — Alexander McCall Smith

I am capable of being idle. — Alexander McCall Smith

Will he come to me, Dream Angus,
Come quietly through the evening light,
Come when I do not expect him, and I am sleepy,
Come when I am drowsy, when I am ready for rest;
Will he come to me, Dream Angus?
...
Will I see the birds about his head,
The birds that are his kisses?
Will I believe that each of us,
Even he who thinks himself unloved,
May be transformed, made different
By one who finds him marvellous? Will I think that?
...
Will he bring me some sort of quietus,
Some form of understanding; will he break my heart;
Will he show me my love; will he give
Me heart's contentment, the end of sorrow,
Will he do that for me; will he do that?
... — Alexander McCall Smith

And although she'd glibly remarked that you couldn't stand still, was this actually true or was it a hollow axiom as false and misleading as any other trite saying? Why should one not stand still? If the position in which one found oneself standing was a satisfactory and comfortable one? She felt no need, no need at all to move on from being Mma Ramotswe of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, wife that great mechanic, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. — Alexander McCall Smith

Being loved and admired by a man like that - and she knew that this man, this mechanic, this fixer of machines with their broken hearts, did indeed love and admire her - was like walking in the sunshine; it gave the same feeling of warmth and pleasure to bask in the love of one who has promised it, publicly at a wedding ceremony, and who is constant in his promise that such love will be given for the rest of his days. What more could any woman ask? None of us, she thought, not one single one of us, could ask for anything more than that. — Alexander McCall Smith

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? — Alexander McCall Smith

She had noticed that there was a tendency on the part of some Americans to believe that everybody, deep inside, wanted to live in America, and that it was inexplicable that people who could do so did not. — Alexander McCall Smith

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. — Alexander McCall Smith

You cannot make somebody love something. They must have love in their heart first. — Alexander McCall Smith

We can't have moral obligations to every single person in this world. We have moral obligations to those who we come up against, who enter into our moral space, so to speak. That means neighbors, people we deal with, and so on. — Alexander McCall Smith

There are awkward moments from which one can retreat, and awkward moments from which there is no escape. — Alexander McCall Smith

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. — Alexander McCall Smith

There's a difference, I think, between falling in love and knowing it. — Alexander McCall Smith

People with something to hide wore sunglasses indoors. They were the ones you had to watch very carefully. — Alexander McCall Smith

The human heart, you see, Mma Ramotswe, is pretty much the same wherever one goes. — Alexander McCall Smith

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. — Alexander McCall Smith

Dogs are in on our human silliness; lions are not. — Alexander McCall Smith

Usually bullies have severe mothers and bad fathers, and they are usually frightened of them. That is why they are bullies, I think. There is something wrong at home. I have found that with children in general and this applies to men as well. — Alexander McCall Smith

The thought crossed her mind that a bed was really a very strange thing-a human nest, really, where our human fragility made its nightly demands for comfort and cosseting — Alexander McCall Smith

Mma Makutsi pondered this. "Why are there fewer and fewer gentlemen, Mma Ramotswe?"
"It is our fault, Mma. It is the fault of ladies."
"Why is that?"
"Because we have allowed men to stop behaving as gentlemen, and when you allow people to do what they wish, then that is what they do. They stop doing the things they need to do." She looked at Mma Makutsi across the steering wheel. "That is well known, I think, Mma. That is well known. — Alexander McCall Smith

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. — Alexander McCall Smith

The trouble with the world today, she thought, was that people were not prepared to stand up to bad behaviour. — Alexander McCall Smith

In such a way is freedom of thought lost ... By small cuts. By small acts of disapproval. By a thousand discouragements of spirit. — Alexander McCall Smith

It was safer, he thought, to keep it to himself; because there are many ways of loving. — Alexander McCall Smith

The house seemed so different at night. Everything was in its correct place, of course, but somehow the furniture seemed more angular and the pictures on the wall more one-dimensional. She remembered somebody saying that at night we are all strangers, even to ourselves, and this struck her as being true. — Alexander McCall Smith

Talking about pumpkins doesn't make them grow. — Alexander McCall Smith

But just because somebody has lots of sweets does not mean that he has stolen them. One thing, you see, does not always lead to another. — Alexander McCall Smith

And she began to weep, dropping her head onto her forearms and rocking backwards and forwards in that curious motion that is perhaps a subconscious attempt to mimic the movement that brings comfort to a tiny baby. That we should in moments of sorrow seek to return to a time when the harshness of the world could be forfended by the simple reassurances of our parents; that we should do that ... — Alexander McCall Smith

Pleasure at hearing what all of us wanted to hear at least occasionally: that there was somebody who liked us, whatever our faults, and liked us sufficiently to say so. - Precious Ramotswe — Alexander McCall Smith

She was, he reflected, one of his closest friends, in a rather curious, slightly old-fashioned way. — Alexander McCall Smith

YOU DO NOT CHANGE PEOPLE BY SHOUTING AT THEM — Alexander McCall Smith

You can only wear one pair of shoes at a time," she said. "Rich people are like the rest of us - two feet, ten toes. We are all the same that way. — Alexander McCall Smith

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

As a girl she had imagined the Milky Way was the curtain of heaven, a notion she had been sorry to abandon as she had grown up. But she would not abandon a belief in heaven itself, wherever that may be, because she felt that if she gave that up then there would be very little left. Heaven may not turn out to be the place of her imagining, she conceded
the place envisaged in the old Botswana stories, a place inhabited by gentle white cattle, with sweet breath
but it would surely be something not too unlike that, at least in the way it felt; a place where late people would be give all that they had lacked on this earth
a place of love for those who had not been loved, a place where those who had had nothing would find they had everything the human heart could desire. — Alexander McCall Smith

The real poison within families is not the poison that you put in your food, but the poison that grows up in the heart when people are jealous of one another and cannot speak these feelings and drain out the poison that way. — Alexander McCall Smith

Great feuds often need very few words to resolve them. Disputes, even between nations, between peoples, can be set to rest with simple acts of contrition and corresponding forgiveness, can so often be shown to be based on nothing much other than pride and misunderstanding, and the forgetting of the humanity of the other
and land, of course. — Alexander McCall Smith

The doctor drummed the fingers of his left hand on the edge of the table, a strange gesture which suggested, Isabel thought, an impatient temperment. Perhaps he had been obliged to listen too long to those whom he did not consider his intellectual equal, exhausted patients with long-running complaints, unable to put their views succinctly. Some doctors could become like that, she thought, just as some lawyers could; prolonged exposure to flawed humanity could create a sense of superiority if one was not careful
and perhaps he was not. — Alexander McCall Smith

I can read more languages than I speak! I speak French and Italian - not very well, alas, but I can get by. I read German and Spanish. I can read Latin (I did a lot of Latin at school.) I'm afraid I do not speak any African languages, although I can understand a little bit of the Zulu-related languages, but only a tiny bit. — Alexander McCall Smith

Mma Ramotswe did not like lying, but sometimes it was necessary, particularly when faced with people who were promoted beyond their talents. — Alexander McCall Smith

The world is full of twenty-year-olds, she thought, all of them blind. Obed — Alexander McCall Smith

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

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

You were looking for somebody, and there was somebody,and you would convince yourself that this random person was what you were really looking for in the first place. — Alexander McCall Smith

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

None of us, she thought, wants the world we know to come to an end; we do not want familiar things to be taken from us. — Alexander McCall Smith

When people ask for advice they very rarely want your advice and will go ahead and do what they want to do anyway, no matter what you say. That applied in every sort of case; it was a human truth of universal application, but one which most people knew little or nothing about. — Alexander McCall Smith

She knew that for many people this was their greatest ambition: to have a partner and a child, to live the domestic life, but she had never thought it would be enough for her. Yet it was. — Alexander McCall Smith

The shoes themselves were light green, with lowish heels (which were very important for comfort and walking; high heels were always a temptation, but, like all temptations, one paid for them later). — Alexander McCall Smith

Our minds can come up with the most entertaining possibilities, if we let them. But most of the time, we keep them under far too close a check. — Alexander McCall Smith

An Englishman was reflecting on the different words that people use for fish. 'Isn't it strange,' he said, 'that the French say le poisson, the Spanish say el pescado, and the English call it fish - which is what it is.' — Alexander McCall Smith

All cats are grey in the dark, he had written in one chapter. So remember that how much you can see of a situation depends on how much light you can shine upon it. — Alexander McCall Smith

It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything. — Alexander McCall Smith

You simply could not help everybody; but you could at least help those who came into your life. — Alexander McCall Smith

We needed resentment, he said, as it was resentment which identified and underlined the wrong. Without these reactive attitudes, we ran the risk of diminishing our sense of right and wrong, because we could end up thinking it just doesn't matter. — Alexander McCall Smith

Chance; pure chance. But chance was a dull explanation because it denied the possibility of the paranormal, and people were often disappointed by dull explanations. Mystery and the unknown were far more exciting because they suggested that our world was not quite as prosaic as we feared it might be. Yet we had to adjure those temptations because they lead to a world of darkness and fear. — Alexander McCall Smith

Why is it that there are always these problems and misunderstandings between men and women? Surely it would have been better if God had made only one sort of person, and the children had come by some other means, with the rain perhaps. — Alexander McCall Smith

Trust your nose, but make sure it's pointing in the right direction. — Alexander McCall Smith

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. — Alexander McCall Smith

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was not a lazy man, but it was remarkable to reflect how most men imagined that things like tea and food would simply appear if they waited long enough. There would always be a woman in the background--a mother, a girlfriend, a wife--who would ensure that those needs would be met. — Alexander McCall Smith

Make a list of what you know, what you don't know, and what you'd like to know. Make a list of possible outcomes. Choose the outcome you think is best, then go for that! — Alexander McCall Smith

Painters aren't expected to paint bleak pictures, are they? — Alexander McCall Smith

Her eyes went to the shelves that stretched up to within a few inches of the ceiling. All four walls were covered; piles of books stood here and there, teetering, vulnerable, she judged, to the slightest footfall. "But who doesn't have a lot of unread books? It's nice, though, just to know that they're there." He — Alexander McCall Smith

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. — Alexander McCall Smith

The new lover, of a few weeks standing, may seem more precious than friends of decades. — Alexander McCall Smith

She had not made a lot of money, but she had not made a loss, and she had been happy and entertained. That counted for infinitely more than a vigorously healthy balance sheet. In fact, she thought, annual accounts should include an item specifically headed Happiness, alongside expenses and receipts and the like. — Alexander McCall Smith

Every story has two sides. So far, we've only heard one. The stupid side." LIFE — Alexander McCall Smith

It's how we read the face, said Ian. Remember that you're talking to a psychologist. We like to think about things like that. It's a question of numerous little signals that create the overall impression.
But how do internal states who themselves physically?
Very easily, said Ian. Think of anger. The knitted brow. Think of determination. The gritted teeth.
And intelligence?
Liveliness and engagement with the world. — Alexander McCall Smith

She had a taste for sugar, however, and this meant that a doughnut or a cake might follow the sandwich. She was a traditionally built lady, after all, and she did not have to worry about dress size, unlike those poor, neurotic people who were always looking in mirrors and thinking that they were too big. What was too big, anyway? Who was to tell another person what size they should be? It was a form of dictatorship, by the thin, and she was not having any of it. If these thin people became any more insistent, then the more generously sized people would just have to sit on them. Yes, that would teach them! Hah! — Alexander McCall Smith

It was a pointed sigh, as sighs sometimes are, not one cast into the air to evaporate, but one calculated to descend, precisely and with great effect, on a target. — Alexander McCall Smith

Mma Ramotswe had heard of the operation's success. She too had been going over various possibilities; in particular she had been thinking of the threat posed by the aunt. Mma Ramotswe had gone out of her way to reassure her, but when the other woman had simply brushed her off she realised that this was one of those people with whom there simply could be no dealing. They were few and far between, thankfully, but when you encountered one of them it was best just to recognise what you were up against, rather than to hope for some miraculous change of mind, some Road to Damascus improvement. — Alexander McCall Smith

There was far too much interest in the past, she thought. People were forever digging up events that had taken place a long time ago. And what was the point in doing this if the effect was merely to poison the present? — Alexander McCall Smith

A society that undermined its teachers and their authority only dug away at its own sure foundations. — Alexander McCall Smith

There is plenty of work for love to do. — Alexander McCall Smith

Oh I love gadgets and I pride myself on keeping at the cutting edge of technology. — Alexander McCall Smith

She remembered love, though, and a feeling of warmth. It was like remembering light, or the glow that sometimes persists after a light has gone out. — Alexander McCall Smith

People who do that sort of thing may reap what they sow, but they also destroy the harvest of those who are around them. — Alexander McCall Smith

It was always disconcerting to meet those who had become so obsessed with a single topic that they could not see their concerns in context. — Alexander McCall Smith

And it was young men in red cars who were the most dangerous of all. Such people were best given a wide berth, both in and out of the car. — Alexander McCall Smith

The physical world - the world of stone and brick - is indifferent to our suffering, to our dramas, she thought. Even a battlefield can be peaceful, can be a place for flowers to grow, for children to play; the memories, the sadness, are within us, not part of the world about us. — Alexander McCall Smith

Sir Seretse Khama, — Alexander McCall Smith

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. — Alexander McCall Smith

They were also shoes that would give the wearer confidence: a person could speak with authority in such shoes. — Alexander McCall Smith

Has it ever occurred to people that love at first sight might be the rule rather than the exception? How many people fall in love gradually rather than on the first occasion they meet the other person? — Alexander McCall Smith

She had not come to the shopping centre to buy shoes; she had come to buy food, and there was a big difference between shopping for food and shopping for shoes, and that difference concentrated on one word: guilt. — Alexander McCall Smith

Nobody went to bed at seven in Paris, even French children. Les enfants stayed up late at night, he had heard, eating with the adults, sipping red wine, and discussing the latest books and films. — Alexander McCall Smith

What a strange,old-fashioned thing to think. Bless you. But what other way was there of saying that you wanted only good for somebody, that you wanted the world to be kind to her, to cherish her?Only old-fashioned words would do for that. — Alexander McCall Smith

It was another of Mma Makutsi's odd statements - utterly unfounded in fact, Mma Ramotswe suspected, but not a point that she wished to argue. As far as she was concerned, if a chair was empty, then anybody should be welcome to sit in it. We should share our chairs, she felt. Maybe that was the real problem with the modern world - not enough of us were prepared to share our chairs. — Alexander McCall Smith

He went to the cupboard where he had stored Eddie's remaining possessions. There was, as he had remembered, a pair of jeans, and he took these out and unfolded them. They were distressed, but no more so than new jeans were these days, and they appeared to fit. William examined himself in the mirror; the jeans took off ten years, he thought, possibly more, and they were perfect with the blazer. This was the very essence of casual smart, he thought - that vague concept that allowed you to wear anything as long as you looked as if you had at least made some effort. He could hold up his head in any company in an outfit like this. — Alexander McCall Smith