If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way. — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment?...only the completely happy think that they are… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
I enjoy women's conversation, and I think that helps me to describe them in fiction. — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
We think the world is ours forever, but we are little more than squatters. — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
As a writer, I have readers who will have a range of political views. I don't think they look to me for… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
Life consists of positive and negative features, and I think that it is permissible to write about both. — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
We all know that it is women who take the decisions, but we have to let men think that the decisions are… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
They're very beautiful, aren't they? Clouds are very beautiful and yet so often we fail to appreciate them properly. We should do… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
I think that we've made great moral progress in the second half of the 20th century in many respects, and particularly in… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
Gracious acceptance is an art - an art which most never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
The people with the strong, brave exteriors are just as weak and vulnerable as the rest of us. And of course they… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
We need to believe I think in justice. We need to run our lives as if justice existed... If we abandon a… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
Most people want nothing to happen. That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time;… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
This is another thing which I really like investigating in my novels: what is it that makes an intimate society, that makes… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
“old-fashioned, gentle Scottish physician, unmoved by the considerations of profit and personal gain that could so disfigure medicine. That doctors should consider themselves businessmen… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
“She had not made a lot of money, but she had not made a loss, and she had been happy and entertained. That counted… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
“To use strong language, she thought, was a sign of bad temper and lack of concern for others. Such people were not clever or… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
“Men are very sensitive, Mma Makutsi. You would not always think it to look at them, but they are. They do not like you… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
“He is a good man, but even a good man can fall for a glamorous woman. That is well known.” “That is very well… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
“And then the second thing you have to do is go and see your son. That is a duty of love, Andrew. It's as… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
“Because laughs never die away entirely,” said Jamie. “At least, if you believe in Marconi.” — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
“The trouble with having a conscience, she said to herself, is that it never sleeps.” — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
“And if there's bad behaviour," Mma Potokwane went on. "If there's bad behaviour, the quickest way of stopping it is to give more love.… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
“Has he not got a wife back wherever he comes from? Is there no wife to say, ‘You must not go off and visit… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
“He looked at her in the darkness, at this woman who was everything to him-mother, Africa, wisdom, understanding, good things to eat, pumpkins, chicken,… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
“It is because you are generous in spirit; and may I be like that; may I become like you—which unrealistic wish, to become the… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
“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,… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share
