Any author of fiction will tell you that characters don't need to be told what to do. — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
“It is undoubtedly the case that the practice of the virtues makes one happier. We’ve somewhat lost sight of that essential truth,… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
My parents were very supportive and always encouraged us. My father was a gentle, nice man. My mother was quite a colourful… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
“We can't have moral obligations to every single person in this world. We have moral obligations to those who we come up… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
“This was loyalty of a sort which was rare in an age of self-indulgence. It was an old-fashioned virtue of the type… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
“Morality is for everybody, and this means that the views of more than one person are needed to create it. That was… — Alexander Mccall smith Copy Share Image
“Isabel had firm views on moral proximity and the obligations it created. WE cannot choose the situations in which we become involved… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
“Most morality, thought Mma Ramotswe, was about doing the right thing because it had been identified as such by a long process… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
Some of my characters are a mixture of various aspects of people I have met. others are pure invention. — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
I'm interested in character and dialogue and exchange of ideas. — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
“She's sociopathic. She will have no moral compunction in doing whatever is in her interests. It's as simple as that.” — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
“A moral dilemma is equally absorbing whether the stakes are the destiny of nations or the happiness of one or two people… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
It was easy to be moral when that was the way you felt anyway. The hard bit about morality was making yourself… — 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
“People who looked after animals were by and large kind people; they simply practised kindness, unlike those who made much of it.… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
“Isabel’s private theory of moral proximity, the basis of those obligations that came into existence when we found ourselves close enough to… — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
“Her friend who treated her maid badly was not a wicked person. She behaved well towards her family and she had always… — 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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“Because laughs never die away entirely,” said Jamie. “At least, if you believe in Marconi.” — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
“The trouble with having a conscience, she said to herself, is that it never sleeps.” — Alexander McCall Smith Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
