Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

The world is full of twenty-year-olds, she thought, all of them blind. Obed

When Emma was five, Mrs. Woodhouse died. Emma did not remember her mother. She remembered love, though, and a feeling of warmth. It was like remembering light, or the glow that sometimes persists after a light has gone out.

There are many temptations in this life, but cake is probably one of the biggest of them.

People don't talk about mercy very much these days—it has a rather old-fashioned ring to it. but it exists and its power is quite extraordinary

We were, when all was said and done, children lost in the wood, and to break into tears was the most understandable of reactions, the most quintessentially human one too.

Nobody enjoys being on display, said Isabel. But then she thought: Some do, and so she added, Except actors. And narcissists.

There are lies you tell with your lips and lies you don't need your lips for. And once people start telling lies, then they become like spiders who weave their web about themselves. They become stuck-caught by the lies all about them. And then they can't get out of the web, no matter how hard they try.

Words were the very first bandage for any wound.

Everybody was a potential assailant; nobody spoke to one another for fear of being misinterpreted; nobody comforted another, put an arm around a shoulder-to do so would be to invite accusation.

There are many sick vehicles here, and I cannot leave them. They are not dying, said Mma Makutsi firmly. They will still be here when we come back.

They're always helpful, those people. Which people? asked Ulf. Librarians. They know everything.

She had always worked as hard as she could, at everything she did, and she simply did not understand how anybody could do otherwise. How could they sit there, as they did, and stare into the space in front of their desks when they could be adding up figures or checking the drivers' returns?

The trouble with the world today, she thought, was that people were not prepared to stand up to bad behaviour.

Tofu wore special flame-proof pants – that was well known. "They call them fibbers' trousers," she said knowledgeably. "They're more expensive, but they stop your pants going on fire when you lie.

Self-pity does not appreciate pedantry.

We are all human, she would say. Men particularly. You must not be ashamed.

Has he not got a wife back wherever he comes from? Is there no wife to say, 'You must not go off and visit library ladies'?

Great art, she felt, had a calming effect on the viewer; it made one stop in awe, which is exactly what Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol did not do. You did not stop in awe. They stopped you in your tracks, perhaps, but that was not the same thing; awe was something quite different

If you knew what is was like to be another person, then how could you possibly do something which would cause pain? The problem, though, was that there seemed to be people in whom that imaginative part was just missing. It could be that they were born that way--with something missing from their brains--or it could be that they became like that because they were never taught by their parents to sympathise with others.

sorrow at the realisation that food was finite.

Whisky nosers, as they called themselves, eschewed what they saw as the pretentiousness of wine vocabulary. While oenophiles resorted to recondite adjectives, whisky nosers spoke the language of everyday life, detecting hints of stale seaweed, or even diesel fuel.

Do not complain about your life. Do not blame others for things that you have brought upon yourself. Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself.

She saw the picture of idle fishing boats tied up at Peterhead; further gloom for Scotland and for a way of life that had produced such a strong culture. Fishermen had composed their songs; but what culture would a generation of computer operators leave behind them?

People were forever digging up events that had taken place a long time ago. And what was the point in doing this if the effect was merely to poison the present? There were many wrongs in the past, but did it help to keep bringing them up and giving them a fresh airing?