Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

It's not hard to do anything if you do it with love.

Class reunions were about curiosity; about satisfaction at the avoidance of the mistakes of one's contemporaries, now revealed in their emerging life histories; about reflecting on the ravages—and injustices—of time; and of realizing, perhaps, how strange and random are the twists and turns of fate.

That's perfect," he said. "I'm sorry about that. It's genetic, I think. My mother had exactly the same problem, and a cousin of hers too. We're allergic to raw onion.

Does it matter? Think of our petty concerns and then look up at the night sky, at the stars in the firmament, and think: do any of our petty little concerns really make one jot of difference? Do they mean anything in the context of this great spinning universe—if universes spin, which I am not at all sure they do…

As a general rule, making other people happy is one of the few things we can do with utter certainty that what we're doing is the right thing.

We have always asked too much of women in this country. They hold up the sky on their shoulders.

But in essence, our smallness, our irrelevance in the cosmic context, should make us less petty, more accepting, less attached to small and ultimately meaningless things.

He felt weary. Life was a battle against wear; the wear of machinery and the wear of the soul. Oil. Grease. Wear.

Reflections on human smallness have often prompted me to think that. What do divisions between people matter? What does it matter if somebody is English or Scottish or whatever?

Mr. Varg?" There was a slight note of impatience in Dr. Svensson's tone. It was all very well for patients to go off into some reverie of their own, but the whole point of these sessions was to disclose, not conceal, and they should articulate what they were thinking, rather than just think it.

I am blessed, and being blessed is something more than just having something; it is a state of mind in which the good of the world is illuminated, is understood. It is as if one is vouchsafed a vision of some sort, she thought, a vision of love, of agape, of the essential value of each and every living thing.

His two young mechanics lived in a completely different world, it seemed to him. This was not the world that he and Mma Ramotswe inhabited - a world in which people went about their business in an orderly way, drank tea at regular intervals, and retired to bed before nine-thirty at night.

Edinburgh dogs do not have owners–too prosaic a term–they have comptrollers.)

But then men do not see things the same way we do, she thought. They have different eyes.

But who doesn't have a lot of unread books? It's nice, though, to know they are there.

She wanted everything back, as we do sometimes in our irrationality and regret; we want it all back.

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.

Ah!" said the therapist. "That's precisely what you're meant to do, you know. Thinking precedes verbalisation, and verbalisation precedes resolution. And much as I approve of that, what we're trying to do here is to find out what you think without thinking. In other words, we want to find out what's going on in your mind. Because that's what—

We should be happy when people have chairs," he admonished. "We should be happy, even if we do not have a chair ourselves.

A woman sees more than a man sees. That is well-known.

That would have been taken out of the Munrowe voice two or three generations ago through being educated at schools that modelled themselves on the English public-school system, even if they were in Scotland.

Dr. Svensson nodded. "As are judges and public health officials and politicians too, I suppose. Anybody who tells us how to behave is a policeman in a sense." "But not therapists?" Dr. Svensson laughed. "A therapist shouldn't tell you how to behave. A therapist should help you to see why you do what you do, and should help you to stop doing it—if that's what you want. So, no, a therapist is certainly not a policeman.

One might forget so many exotic cheeses, he thought, but the memory of cheddar always remained.

Sub specie aeternitatis, she thought: In the context of eternity, this is nothing, as are all our human affairs.