Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

Mrs. Moffat had taken her hand, for comfort, and they had sat there in silence for a while. Sometimes it seemed as if the world itself was broken, that there was something wrong with all of us, something broken in such a way that it might not be put together again; but the holding of hands, human hand in human hand, could help, could make the world seem less broken.

Lions walk on four legs, observed Mma Makutsi. Was this man walking on four legs? That can be a big giveaway, Mma.

Very few people imagine their own future accurately. And then they're often pleasantly surprised.

because it is possible to change the world, if one is determined enough, and if one sees with sufficient clarity just what it is that has to be changed.

Dreadfully insincere,' said Angus. 'Psychopaths - every one of them. Show me a cat, Domenica, and I'll show you a psychopath. Textbook examples.

Metaphors were so bloody: people shot messengers,, flogged dead horses, cut the throats of their competitors. Perhaps that was life; perhaps that's what it was really like.

And she, Isabel, had gone along with this and all the time what was happening was she was becoming increasingly possessive of Jamie without ever having to acknowledge it. Now there was another woman, a girl really, and there was an obvious intimacy between them, which would exclude her as it would have to do, and that would be the end of everything.

It shall be an offence for any man, either a husband or other person of the male sex, married or otherwise, being over the age of twelve years, to throw any item of clothing having been worn by the said person for whatever length of time, upon the floor of any bathroom or any room adjacent to and connected to a bathroom, without good cause.

Angus thought about this. She was right. That was why our national conversation was so bad. Courtesy had been abandoned in favour of the put-down, the attack, the calculated sound bite. What sort of national conversation was that? The answer came to him immediately: none.

Es ist ein Zeichen geistiger Reife, seine Meinung zu ändern, wenn man merkt, dass man im Unrecht ist.

One might forget so many exotic cheeses, he thought, but the memory of cheddar always remained. Should one be embarrassed by choosing cheddar every time? he asked. Matthew laughed. There's no need to apologize for simple things. But is cheddar simple? Domenica enquired. Just because there's a lot of it, does that make it simple?

That was the way the world was; it was composed of a few almost perfect people (ourselves); then there were a good many people who generally did their best but were not all that perfect (our friends and colleagues); and finally, there were a few rather nasty ones (our enemies and opponents).

She stopped. 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 the Queen, and then there was Seretse Khama and our own people. That is called history, you see." "But who asked them here?" The aunt shook her head. "There are some guests who do not knock." "That is very rude." "Yes," said the aunt.

That, of course, is always a good time to think—when you know that you are going to have to do something, but you know that you do not have to do it just yet.

A flaky skin was particularly bad if you were a criminal, she had read, as it meant that you left a great deal of DNA at the scene of the crime. That had amused her. That would teach any flaky-skinned housebreakers to burgle people's houses. "You really need to do something about your skin," the police might say to such people when they arrested them.

Our possessing of our world is a temporary matter: we stamp our ownership upon our surroundings, give familiar names to the land about us, erect statues of ourselves, but all of this is swept away, so quickly, so easily. We think the world is ours for ever, but we are little more than squatters.

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.

Why? Why is there a crisis in literature? Because of lies and rottenness. Simplicity and sincerity have been replaced by obsfucation and pretense. Men, of course. They love to create mystery where none exists. It's the way they think.

She looked down. He had clasped his hands together, his fingers interlaced. It was a gesture, she thought, of unequivocal pleasure--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.

In fact, none of us knows how he ever managed to get his LLB in the first place. Maybe they're putting law degrees in cornflakes boxes these days.

Make sure that the road is always clear for your enemy to leave'?

When meeting for lunch somebody one's uncomfortable with, it's important to have somewhere to look, don't you agree?

The night is a very bad time for questions to which there are no answers." Mr Badule looked at her. "You are very right, my sister. There is