Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

I see no point in being despondent. We might as well enjoy ourselves during our brief tenure of this life.

Wherever I go in the world, people all know about Scotland Street and are always asking me about what's going to happen to the characters next.

Manners are the basic building blocks of civil society.

One of the most destructive things that's happening in modern society is that we are losing our sense of the bonds that bind people together - which can lead to nightmares of social collapse.

We find what we are looking for in life, her father had once said to her, which was true—if you look for happiness, you will see it; if you look for distrust and envy and hatred—all those things—you will find those too.

He had been thinking of how landscape moulds a language. It was impossible to imagine these hills giving forth anything but the soft syllables of Irish, just as only certain forms of German could be spoken on the high crags of Europe; or Dutch in the muddy, guttural, phlegmish lowlands.

There is plenty of work for love to do.

These men were like leeches; they sucked away at the goodness of a woman's heart until it was dry and all her love had been used up. That took a long time, he knew, because women seemed to have vast reservoirs of goodness in them

The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle.

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. That always works, you know. People say we must punish when there is wrongdoing, but if you punish you're only punishing yourself. And what's the point of that?

If more women were in power, they wouldn't let wars break out, she said. Women can't be bothered with all this fighting. We see war for what it is- a matter of broken bodies and crying mothers.

Special things have a way of surviving.

You are a lucky lady to be marrying a man who can fix things. Most husbands just break things.

There was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe -- the only lady private detective in Botwana -- brewed tea. And three mugs -- one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need?

Traditional Botswana men like ladies who are more traditionally shaped. You and I, Mma. We remind men of how things used to be in Botswana before these modern-shaped ladies started to get men all confused.

We should be careful of the insults we fling at others, lest they return and land at our feet, newly minted to apply to those who had first coined them.

You have to leave your heart to get on with it. It's rather like breathing. We don't have to remind ourselves to breathe.

Women are the ones who knows what's going on,' she said quietly . 'They are the ones with eyes. Have you not heard of Agatha Christie?

The house seemed so different at night. Everything was in its correct place, of course, but somehow the furniture seemed more angular and the pictures on the wall more one-dimensional. She remembered somebody saying that at night we are all strangers, even to ourselves, and this struck her as being true.

There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.

Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom...

She had not made a lot of money, but she had not made a loss, and she had been happy and entertained. That counted for infinitely more than a vigorously healthy balance sheet. In fact, she thought, annual accounts should include an item specifically headed Happiness, alongside expenses and receipts and the like.

This was a townscape raised in the teeth of cold winds from the east; a city of winding cobbled streets and haughty pillars; a city of dark nights and candlelight, and intellect.

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, the white sky across the endless, endless bush, and the giraffe that cried, giving its tears for women to daub on their baskets; O Botswana, my country, my place.