Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

Problems have a way of solving themselves.

were prepared to shake their heads when they looked at other, unacceptable, people. It was hard work, shaking your head like that, but it had to be done—there was no way round it.

He became quiet. It is always a special moment when you raise a submarine's periscope, because that is when you find out where you are. You hope that you have come up in the right place, but you can never be absolutely sure. So if your hands shake a little as the periscope rises above the waves, and if you feel your heart thump a bit more loudly, then that is entirely normal.

MMA RAMOTSWE observed speed limits for two reasons. One of these was that she believed that laws were there to be obeyed, and that if everybody drove as fast as they liked there would be mayhem on the roads.

every wife [..] had a mental list of things that her husband should do but realistically never would do.

that was enough to make her blush with shame for the mere fact that Las Vegas existed. There

When you go home from work at the end of the day, you sit on your small veranda, watching the day turns to dusk, nursing a cup of redbush tea in your hands, and wonder what on earth you can possibly do to help. "The Saturday big tent wedding party " page 41

them that if we do not forgive then we run the risk of being eaten up with hatred inside

I'm glad you came," said Rob. "I like having lunch. I find it a much more sociable meal than dinner.

The loudly good are often not the best of people; the intuitively good, to whom it may not occur ever to discuss what they do, let alone why they do it, may be morally unsung, but are heroes nonetheless.

Do you think your dog might have been drunk when he bit these people, Mr Lordie?

Be very careful of anything that looks too good to be true. Because if it looks too good to be true, that's probably because that's exactly what it is!

Violins sang, brass crowed, while bassoons, she felt, rumbled according to a Richter scale all of their own. Charlie

we live out our years as best we can, not knowing their number, not really knowing, in the case of most of us, why we do what we do and how we came to be where we are; thinking we know it, but suspecting that we do not really know.

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.

There were times when life's problems were convincingly outweighed by its possibilities, and this, she felt, was one.

That is important," said Mma Makutsi from behind her desk. "One does not want a lady who talks too much.

Big Lou sighed. "The Devil's just a tattie-bogle. And there's no such place as Hell, Bob." Bob hesitated. "No, I don't think there is. But why did they tell us all that?" "It was a useful threat, Bob. Fear works. It secured compliance.

So they decided to consult a cousin who was a prominent psychiatrist. He examined Antonio—whom he knew well, anyway—and declared him insane, which of course he wasn't, even by Italian standards.

There were three chairs on the verandah—comfortable old wooden chairs that probably dated from Protectorate days. "The British brought chairs," Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni once said. "They took chairs with them wherever they went in the world. And they left the chairs behind when they went home.

It would have been better to talk,' muttered Mma Makutsi. Mma Ramotswe agreed. It was always – always – better to talk.

A road followed in faith was the road that led nowhere, because it stopped, suddenly and without warning, at a sign which said, unambiguously, Wrong way.

one of those dreadful boarding schools. It was down on the South Coast. I think some very unpleasant things happened there…. So many lives were distorted by such cruelty. I know so many men who had to put up with that, so many….

All of us, Mma Ramotswe thought, wanted something, even if we were unable to tell anybody exactly what it was that we wanted.