Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

There were some people, it seemed, who were incapable of being pleasant about anything. Of course, the cars that such people drove tended to be difficult as well. Nice cars have nice drivers; bad cars have bad drivers. A person's gearbox revealed everything that you could want to know about that person, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

Men are very sensitive, Mma Makutsi. You would not always think it to look at them, but they are. They do not like you to point out that they are wrong, even when they are. That is the way things are, Mma--it just is.

Do I shock you? I think I do. That's the problem these days – nobody speaks their mind. No, don't smile. They really don't. We've been browbeaten into conformity by all sorts of people who tell us what we can and cannot say. Haven't you noticed it? The tyranny of political correctness. Don't pass any judgement on anything. Don't open your trap in case you offend somebody or other.

Daughters could survive a powerful mother, but boys found it almost impossible. Such boys were often severely damaged and spent the rest of their lives running away from their mothers, or from anybody who remotely reminded them of their mothers; either that, or they became their mothers, in a desperate, misguided act of psychological self defence.

Remember the Hottentots? asked James. They've become the Khoi now, which means that the Germans will have to retire that wonderful word of theirs, Hottentotenpotentatenstantenattentater, which means, as you know, one who attacks the aunt of a Hottentot potentate.

You simply could not help everybody; but you could at least help those who came into your life.

That, said Isabel, is the most painful feature of lost love. you wonder what the other person is doing. Right at this moment. What is he/she doing?

But he'll never be fully recognised, because Scots literature these days is all about complaining and moaning and being injured in one's soul.

A wedding was a strange ceremony, she thought, with all those formal words, those solemn vows made by one to another; whereas the real question that should be put to the two people involved was a very simple one. Are you happy with each other? was the only question that should be asked; to which they both should reply, preferably in unison, Yes.

Protestations of happiness could sound almost boasting to those whose happiness is incomplete. One did not boast of perfect skin to one affected by dermatitis; for the same reason, perhaps, one should take care in proclaiming one's happiness.

I think that the measure of whether a life has been a good one is how much love there has been in that life--love both given and received.

When you are with somebody you love the smallest, smallest things can be so important, so amusing because love transforms the world, everything. And was that what had happened?

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was not a lazy man, but it was remarkable to reflect how most men imagined that things like tea and food would simply appear if they waited long enough. There would always be a woman in the background--a mother, a girlfriend, a wife--who would ensure that those needs would be met.

Most problems could be diminished by the drinking of tea and the thinking through of things that could be done while tea was being drunk. And even if that did not solve problems, at least it could put them off for a little while, which we sometimes needed to do, we really did.

Isabel saw the intimacy of the gestures and felt immediately empty, a sensation so physical and so overwhelming that she felt for a moment that she might stop breathing, being empty of air

I told him that if a man is born in a dry place, then although he may dream of rain, he does not want too much, and that he will not mind the sun that beats down and down.

the real poison within families is not the poison that you 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.

We needed resentment, he said, as it was resentment which identified and underlined the wrong. Without these reactive attitudes, we ran the risk of diminishing our sense of right and wrong, because we could end up thinking it just doesn't matter.

Irene gasped. Have you taken leave of your senses, Stuart? she hissed. Have you? Stuart closed his eyes. No, he said. Au contraire. It was strong language for the Edinburgh New Town, but he had to say it. Don't au contraire me, said Irene. But it was too late. He had.

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, it's understood. It is as if one is vouchsafed a vision of some sort, a vision of love, of 'agape', of the essential value of each and every living thing.

Men can be teenagers until well into their twenties. That is well known

There were times when an apology was best, she thought, even when one really had nothing to apologise for. If only people would say sorry sooner rather than later, Mma Ramotswe believed, much discord and unhappiness could be avoided. But that was not the way people were. So often pride stood in the way of apology, and then, when somebody was ready to say sorry, it was already too late.

Perhaps if you don't know there's a gap, you don't worry about it. If you were a millipede, a tshongololo , crawling along the ground would you look at the birds and worry about not having wings? Probably not.

pleasure at hearing what all of us wanted to hear at least occasionally: that there was somebody who liked us, whatever our faults, and liked us sufficiently to say so. - Precious Ramotswe