Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni," she asked, "do you think that our souls grow as we get older?" He did not answer immediately, but when he did, she thought his answer quite perfect. "Yes," he said. "Our souls get wider. They grow like the branches of a tree—growing outwards. And

This advertisement let you be yourself, which is what most people really wanted, when you came to think of it.

There was always injustice in any border, in anything. You drew a line and there was always somebody just on the other side; on one side of an arbitrary line there could be happiness and prosperity, on the other misery. But he did not say this.

Talking about pumpkins doesn't make them grow.

It was a maze of wires, but he was soon able to see just where the key slotted into the ignition and to make out the points which must be bridged.

How sorry she felt for white people, who couldn't do any of this, and who were always dashing around and worrying themselves over things that were going to happen anyway. What use was it having all that money if you could never sit still or just watch your cattle eating grass? None, in her view; none at all, and yet they did not know it. Every so often you met a white person

Offering a lady a chair was one way of showing that this work was appreciated, and that strength and brute force—at which men generally tended to excel—was not the only thing that counted. Respect for ladies tamed men, and there were many men who were sorely in need of taming; that was well known, said Mma Ramotswe.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. "People are always falling ill, Mma. That is the way we are." He paused. "I'm sorry, of course. It is not very pleasant being unwell, but it is always happening

telephoned Jamie the next morning at the earliest decent hour; nine o'clock, in her view. Isabel observed an etiquette of the telephone: a call before eight in the morning was an emergency; between eight and nine it was an intrusion; thereafter calls could be made until ten in the evening, although anything after nine-thirty required an apology for the disturbance. After ten one was into emergency time again.

The real poison within families is not the poison that can be put in your food, but the poison that grows up in the heart when people are jealous of one another and cannot speak these feelings and drain out the poison that way.

Anna developed her theory. "In other words, Signe is framing Bim for a crime that she committed herself." "This is becoming complicated," said Ulf. "Life is complicated, Ulf. That's the problem." "And we exist to un-complicate it?" Anna smiled. "Yes. And isn't it nice to know why you exist?

Love and loss—two things that went together, it seemed, with a poignant inevitability; we loved, knowing that we would lose, but loved nonetheless because...She stopped. Yes, because we did not choose to love; we loved because we had to. Love was something that happened to us; it was never planned, even if we knew that some day, at some moment, it might alight upon us and—we hoped—change everything.

If you lived in a house your parents lived in, then you would not have had to buy it. But the house itself represented inherited wealth, and in some eyes, that was somehow tainted.

Perhaps one should expect to be attended to by philosophers in Edinburgh delicatessens, just as one might be waited upon by psychoanalysts in the restaurants of Buenos Aires. Is the braised beef really what you want?

It is better to tell people good things, Mma—if you can.

Penury was a matter of hard chairs and mean cushions; prosperity—old money—was a matter of feathers: an absurd reductionist view of it, but at times quite strikingly true.

She knew that for many people this was their greatest ambition: to have a partner and a child, to live the domestic life, but she had never thought it would be enough for her. Yet it was.

There may be no book on the mothers of poets, or artists in general, but it might one day be written and would be, I think, an enlightening read.

Moral Philosophy for two-year-olds, she thought. Don't throw food . It was as good a starting point as any to begin the teaching of responsibility towards the world around us. And it was helpful to back it up with some justification too: That's not nice . Again, a simple expression said it all.

That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want.

But sometimes cats just have nasty natures, don't you think? And you can't do much about a personality disorder. Cats are psychopaths at heart.

There are so many people who would love to be able to live in peace, but there are so many others who do not want to let them.

We change the earth and our changes may only be temporary; yet the signs of what we have done may persist, as these mounds did.

Like so many women, her life seemed to be all about the needs of others. Auden had said something about that, she reminded herself—something witty. We are here on this earth to help others, but he had no idea why the others were here.