Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

There were world within worlds, and each will have within its confines values and meanings. It may not really matter to the world at large, thought Isabel, that I should feel happy rather than sad, but it matters to me, and the fact that it matters matters.

There were many suggestions as to improvements: the addition of a window here and a door there, the insertion of an extra basin for the children to wash their hands before they handled the books—"An excellent, practical suggestion," said the principal—and then several views were expressed as to the colour of the walls, the roof, and the shelving.

Doing the right thing, she knew, was often not as enjoyable as doing the wrong thing. The wrong thing often made for a better story, but it was still the wrong thing--nothing could change that.

people in Canada talk about feeling solitude? They sometimes call it a country of solitudes.

Nobody talks about respectable people any longer," said Angus. "Perhaps that's because it has become unfashionable to be respectable." "Respectable people disapprove of things," mused Domenica. "And Edinburgh used to be very disapproving. Now it's only moderately so.

Ulf's life, normally so settled and so ordered, had now become markedly more complicated. What had been the Bim Sundström case had now become the Signe Magnusson investigation, and had, in the process, transformed itself from a case of the suspected non-disappearance of a non-existent person to one involving the actual disappearance of a real person. He

Moral philosophy] also has to bear in mind who we are, our human limitations. It's not just something that one does in armchairs. As she spoke, she thought of her own armchair. The last time she had sat in it, she had drifted off to sleep while watching the news. For a moral philosopher's armchair, she thought, it's somewhat under-used.

Mr Pilai looked down. "Mma Ramotswe," he said. "Please let me look at you. I have just been given these new spectacles, and I can see the world clearly for the first time in years. Ow! It is a wonderful thing. I had forgotten what it was like to see clearly. And there you are, Mma. You are looking very beautiful, very fat." "Thank you, Rra.

that is how marriages take place. If you left it up to men, they would never get there. Nobody would be married. You have to remind men to get married.

That was what academic freedom was all about, Herr Huber thought. It was the freedom to do what one liked and not be challenged by people lower down the pecking order who did not like what you did.

The forges of friendship, thought Angus, may be busy ones, but their dorrs are always open.

Sometimes, you know, good things have to be done—they just have to be done. And most of us—myself included—are too timid to do them. Fortunately, there are brave people who are prepared to take the risk, who do these things, often in such a way that nobody can see them. They say, The world doesn't have to be the way it is; we can change it. That's what they say—and then they do it.

Unlearned language?" "There's a technical term for it," she said. "Xenoglossy. It's the ability to speak a language you've never learned. Some people appear to do so under hypnosis; they're put into a trance and they start talking as another personality. It's regression.

Dee thought that this was a good idea. She approved of exercise and took it herself, in theory at least. But exercise without a good diet was not enough. What was the use of pounding the pavements if one was deficient in selenium, or magnesium for that matter?

There are awkward moments from which one can retreat, and awkward moments from which there is no escape.

That's the way things are, don't you think? It's human nature. We do things for people we know. Everybody does that.

She hoped that was the case, anyway, and that, she supposed, was the way it would always be. You hoped that what you did was for the overall good, but you could never be sure. Sometimes there were doubts, and those doubts could persist, but often you really had no choice. You had to feel your way through the complexities of this life and hope, just hope, that you got it right more often than you got it wrong. And sometimes, of course, you did not have to do anything at all.

That at least was a consolation: separation and loss were something that we all experienced; the pain was shared, and was perhaps easier for that.

A funambulist! muttered Isabel. Eddie, moving towards the door, stopped. What's that? Isabel explained. Cat's new boyfriend. A funambulist. One who walks on tightropes. Like all of us, she thought. In the final analysis.

But that miracle would eventually arrive, as it always had, and the landscape would turn from brown to green within hours under the kiss of the rain. And there were other colours that would follow the green; yellows, blues, reds would appear in patches across the veld as if great cakes of dye had been crumbled and scattered by an unseen hand.

Saying sorry does not make you look small—it makes you look big." "I think so too," said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. "But some people are small inside, and if you're small inside, you can't be big outside. It just won't come to you.

She had always understood that love could have an intense physical effect; could fill a space somewhere in the chest, could turn knees weak, could raise the pulse; could intoxicate, just as could a strong martini or a glass of champagne. Could, she thought, and would…but only if you allowed it, only if you opened whatever portals of the heart needed to be opened. And some people, of course, found it difficult to do that.

Invisibility to the young of course is a quality that grows slowly: by thirty one is beginning to get fainter, by forty one is starting to disappear, by fifty the metaphorical hill has been crossed and one is simply no longer ther.

One never gets anywhere unless one leaves