Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

So one might cry for everything that was wrong with the world, for all the injustice and crudity and cruelty, for all the things that are stolen from people.

If people have ghosts, then why shouldn't other things have them? What makes us so special that only we can have ghosts?

If she had listened to her father, if she had listened to the cousin's husband, she would never have married Note and the years of unhappiness would never have occurred. But they did, because she was headstrong, as everyone is at the age of twenty, and when we simply cannot see, however much we may think we can . The world is full of twenty-year-olds, she thought, all of them blind.

It will be good for them to get out of London and get some country air. All those people in London breathing the air in and out; just think of it, Emma. Just think of all that breathing going on in London—it's a wonder there's any air left for the rest of us.

There are indeed ducks in Blackford Pond." "On it," muttered Isabel. "What?" "On the pond. There are ducks on the pond. There are fish in it." Even as she spoke, Isabel had no idea why she was being so pedantic, and

Why should everybody embrace the herd instinct, which required one to regard one set of politicians as being always in the right while demonizing another set?

There were countless injustices and difficulties in this world, but small points of light too, where the darkness was held back.

For once again she sensed that our heart is not always able to say what it wants to say and frequently has to content itself with less.

He was one of those people, she thought, who just seemed to know a great deal. And he spoke so wisely, as if had thought for hours about everything he said.

Number 1," read Dr Fairbairn. "People making me do things I don't want to do. I hate this. I hate this. Every day I have to do things that other people want me to do and it leaves me no time to do any of the things I want to do. And nobody asks me what I want to do, anyway.

And what, she wondered, was the difference between vulgar curiosity and acceptable curiosity? Was it just that our own curiosity was perfectly understandable, whereas the curiosity of others was vulgar? She smiled at the thought; that sort of distinction lay at the heart of many of our acts of discrimination. What I like is art; what you like is kitsch. My old car has character; yours is a wreck.

Meat was what men liked in sandwiches—and if the man was sophisticated, then he might like a bit of mustard as well.

You'd think he'd look more ashamed of himself, said Bertie. You'd think that he'd look more ashamed of being a Campbell.

Manfred's interventions, he thought, had all the characteristics of radio jamming, designed to stop anybody else talking.

It did not matter in the least what bed you were born in: what counted was what you were inside. People in England, she suspected, sometimes just did not grasp that and that was a pity: their society was more stratified than Scotland's; they needed to read Robert Burns's A Man's a Man for a' That, she felt, because that said all that had to be said on that subject. If you understood what Burns was saying in that poem, then you understood how Scotland felt—at heart.

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.

there was something that Isabel had said that always stuck in his mind. Remember what you have and the other person doesn't. It was simple--almost too simple--advice and yet, like all such home advice, it expressed a profound truth.

It must be frustrating being a poet-or any sort of artist-and not being able to offend anyone any more.

There were so many lives, she thought, that could only be led with difficulty, with pain, and because we were so bound up in our own lives, so many of these were invisible to us until suddenly we saw, and knew, and felt that sudden pang of human sympathy that comes with knowing.

Bim allowed herself to smile as the thought occurred to her that perhaps the reason why Signe had two boyfriends was that if you put them together, with their obvious defects, you would end up with one, complete boyfriend.

It was curious how some people had a highly developed sense of guilt, she thought, while others had none.

There were women in the sacred dance group, no doubt, and one of these might be taken aside, woman to woman, and asked to help see that he came to no harm. England was full of helpful women, Berthea was convinced: there were legions of them, all anxious to help in some way and many of them feeling quite frustrated that there were not quite enough men—for demographic reasons—in need of their help.

He could not imagine being interested in that way in somebody like Mma Mateleke; how would one ever get to plant a kiss on such a person if she was always talking? It would be difficult to get one's lips into contact with a mouth that was always opening and shutting to form words; that would surely be very distracting for a man, he thought, and might even discourage him to the point of disinclination, if that was the right word.

Preserve' is an entirely suitable motto for a jam-making company," said one. "Marmalade and so on—I'm not so sure it's quite right for a firm of lawyers.