Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment?...only the completely happy think that they are in the correct place.

She was not sure if she would want him to have known; we do not always wish for those for whom we long to know that we long for them, especially if the longing is impossible, or inappropriate. . . to be loved by the unlovable was not something that most people could cope with.

The point about love, the essential point, was that we loved what we loved. We did not choose. We just loved.

Boys, men, she said. They're all the same. They think that this [their manhood] is something special and they're all so proud of it. They do not know how ridiculous it is.

Sorry about your sausage dog.

Mma Ramotsew accepted her large slice of cake and looked at the rich fruit within it. There were at least seven hundred calories in that, she thought, but it did not matter; she was a traditionally built lady and she did not have to worry about such things.

Sometimes she thought that the people overseas had no room in their heart for Africa, because nobody had ever told them that African people were just the same as they were

But that's exactly the problem, retorted Isabel. We're all stuck with the same tired and trusted ideas. If we refused to entertain the possibility of something radically different, then we'd never make any progress - ever. We'd still be thinking that the sun revolved round the earth.

She knew that she had a tendency to allow her mind to wander, but surely that's what made the world interesting. One thought led to another, one memory triggered another. How dull it would be, she thought, not to be reminded of the interconnectedness of everything, how dull for the present not to evoke the past, for here not to imply there.

She's sociopathic. She will have no moral compunction in doing whatever is in her interests. It's as simple as that.

Isabel observed an etiquette of the telephone: a call before eight in the morning was an emergency; between eight and nine it was an intrusion; thereafter calls could be made until ten in the evening, although anything after nine-thirty required an apology for the disturbance. After ten one was into emergency time again.

Great feuds often need very few words to resolve them. Disputes, even between nations, between peoples, can be set to rest with simple acts of contrition and corresponding forgiveness, can so often be shown to be based on nothing much other than pride and misunderstanding, and the forgetting of the humanity of the other—and land, of course.

There was so much suffering in Africa that it was tempting just to shrug your shoulders and walk away. But you can't do that, she thought. You just can't.

We shall change all that...because it is possible to change the world, if one is determined enough, and if one sees with sufficient clarity just what has to be changed.

There was far too much interest in the past, she thought. 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 are many sadnesses in the hearts of men who are far away from their countries.

If we treated others with the consideration that one would give to those who only had a few days to live, then we would be kinder, at least.

Isabel had firm views on moral proximity and the obligations it created. WE cannot choose the situations in which we become involved in this life; we are caught up in them whether we like it or not. If one encounters the need for another, because of who one happens to be, or where one happens to find oneself, and one is in a position to help, then one should do so. It was as simple as that.

this woman, moved by some private sorrow as much as the words being spoken, cried almost silently, unobserved by others, apart from Mma Ramotswe, who stretched out her hand and laid it on her shoulder. Do not cry, Mma , she began to whisper, but changed her words even as she uttered them, and said quietly, Yes, you can cry, Mma . We should not tell people not to weep - we do it because of our sympathy for them - but we should really tell them that their tears are justified and entirely right.

It was a pointed sigh, as sighs sometimes are, not one cast into the air to evaporate, but one calculated to descend, precisely and with great effect, on a target.

The danger, of course, is that we spend time imagining that we would be happier elsewhere, and forget to cultivate happiness where fate has placed us.

People stuck by others for years and years, in the face of all odds, and it should be relief, not disbelief, that one felt on witnessing it.

Everybody knows, she thought, that we have a skeleton underneath our skin; there's no reason to show it

We can't afford to be without God, Feliks continued. Even if he doesn't exist, we have to hold on to him. Because if we don't, then how are we to convince ourselves that we have to go on with this fight? If you take God out of it, then right and justice become small, human things. And weak things, too.