Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

I think this bandage is not needed," said Mma Ramotswe, bending down to remove it. "Hospitals feel they have to put a bandage on anybody who goes there—just in case. Sometimes you get a bandage even if you are just visiting somebody.

He introduced himself and I fell in love with him there and then. It took two minutes, at the most. It was like getting an anaesthetic. You start counting backwards from ten and you're out by the time you get to eight. Bang. Love.

all of us had a view from somewhere, a view of the world from the perspective of who we were, of what had happened to us, of how we thought about things.

An Englishman was reflecting on the different words that people use for fish. 'Isn't it strange,' he said, 'that the French say le poisson, the Spanish say el pescado, and the English call it fish—which is what it is.' 

Love had transformed the world for me. Transformed it.

You are innocent in your heart," she had said to him. "That is the most important thing." And he had thought about that for a few moments before shaking his head and saying, "I would like that to be true, Mma, but it is not. It is what other people think. That is the most important thing.

Matrons ran hospitals. There may have been doctors around, and some of these doctors may have been allowed to use titles that suggested that they were in charge, but everyone knew that the person doing the real work of running the hospital was Matron.

Mma Ramotswe stepped forward and put an arm around Patience's shoulder. "Mma, " she said, "I see you." It was the oldest and simplest of African greetings: I see you. It implied so much more than it said, though, because it meant that Mma Ramotswe saw not only the person standing before her, but all that lay behind her – who she was, where she came from, how she felt.

His dog might not be so much of an asset, but there was no rule that one had to declare a dog on the first date. That could be revealed later, when the relationship was strong enough to allow for disclosure of dogs, or even children.

If only people remembered that, then they would be kinder to others—and kindness, Mma Ramotswe believed, was the most important thing there was. She knew that in the depths of her being; she knew it.

Psychology, she thought; that is what they called it these days, but in her view it was something much older than that. It was woman's knowledge, that was what it was; knowledge of how men behaved and how they could be persuaded to do something if one approached the matter in the right way.

Nobody challenged men openly, of course, but when women spoke now amongst themselves" (pg.33)

Of course," said Mma Ramotswe. "It is very important for a matron to be traditionally built. It adds authority.

For most of us, life is lived with the philosophical volume turned half down. Yes, the world may be beautiful and intense and moving; yes, the very fact of human existence poses the most extraordinarily profound dilemmas; yes, our every act may involve finely nuanced decisions that have to be made; but we have a bus to catch, but we have a bill to pay, but we have to collect the children from school, but Ã¢â'¬Â¦

He also spends a lot of my money on vitamin pills and biltong.

There were people like that, he thought; people for whom one wanted only happiness because that is what they deserved, but who were destined to be denied it because the gods, and the world, were unfair. The queue for happiness was not well ordered, he thought; it stretched out and wound round corners, and sometimes, it seemed, the end was so hard to see.

I saw the snake myself, and I am not one to exaggerate. It was two metres long, at the very least. And it was a mamba. I know those snakes. It was a mamba—not a hyperbole." "I would not like to be bitten by a hyperbole," muttered Mma Ramotswe. She could not stop herself; she had to say this, although more or less immediately she regretted it. "They are very dangerous, Mma," said Mma Potokwane.

But we are all fortunate in one way or another. The task for most of us is to identify in what way that is, would you not agree?" 81.

Why do you ask that dog if he has a soul?" Mma Ramotswe sighed. "It's very complicated, Rra. You see…Well, you see: Mma Makutsi said dogs were just meat inside. Those were her actual words." "She's wrong," he said. "I think so. I

The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought.

Alain de Botton has written a book called How Proust Can Change Your Life, a title that I suspect was devised with at least some tongue in cheek but that speaks, nonetheless, to a very real possibility of personal transformation. The title of this book is in a way lighthearted homage to de Botton's remarkable book.

Any extreme political creed brought only darkness in the long run; it lit up nothing. The best politics were those of caution, tolerance and moderation, Angus maintained, but such politics were, alas, also very dull, and certainly moved nobody to poetry.

Love was a form of blindness that closed eyes of the most glaring faults. You could love a murderer, and simply not believe that your lover would do so much as crush a tick, let alone kill somebody." (Pg.46)

and although she'd glibly remarked that you couldn't stand still, was this actually true or was it a hollow axiom as false and misleading as any other trite saying? Why should one not stand still? If the position in which one found oneself standing was a satisfactory and comfortable one? She felt no need, no need at all to move on from being Mma Ramotswe of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, wife that great mechanic, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.