Alexander McCall Smith Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
More Alexander McCall Smith quote about:
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“The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“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.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“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.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“What I really like investigating in my novels: what is it that makes an intimate society, that makes a society in which moral concern for others will be possible? Part of that I think are manners and ritual. We tried to get rid of manners, we tried to abolish manners in the '60s. Manners were very, very old-fashioned and un-cool. And of course we didn't realise that manners are the building blocks of proper moral relationships between people.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“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.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“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.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“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.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“We need to believe I think in justice. We need to run our lives as if justice existed. If we abandon a belief that justice will eventually be done, we make this world much more difficult for ourselves.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“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.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“Some of my characters are a mixture of various aspects of people I have met. others are pure invention.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“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...”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“I enjoy women's conversation, and I think that helps me to describe them in fiction.”
-- 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 -
“I see no point in being despondent. We might as well enjoy ourselves during our brief tenure of this life.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“There is room in history for all of us.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“If you want to write, do two things - read lots of books and also, in your own writing, practise. Just write and write and then write again. persist. And never be put off or discouraged. You can do it!”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“[Edinburgh] is a city of shifting light, of changing skies, of sudden vistas. A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“Life consists of positive and negative features, and I think that it is permissible to write about both.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“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.”
-- 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 -
“It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“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.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“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.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out.”
-- 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 -
“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.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“Painters aren't expected to paint bleak pictures, are they?”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“I have three older sisters, so we were a reasonably large family and, in general, a happy one.”
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
“Oh I love gadgets and I pride myself on keeping at the cutting edge of technology.”
-- 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
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