Quotes from Alexander McCall Smith

Time and time again people showed better qualities than we might dare to hope for, sometimes against all expectation.

Isabel smiled. She liked a conversation that went in odd directions; she liked the idea of playfulness in speech. People could be so depressingly literal. Jamie

Jamie said he thought that people who had nothing to prove were usually charming in their dealings with others. "Only the insecure are nasty," he said.

He looked at the portrait hung on the wall behind him. It was one of the gallery's most popular pictures, Guy Kinder's brooding portrait of the crime writer, Ian Rankin, sitting in the Oxford Bar, the haunt of his fictional Edinburgh detective. Ian Rankin was looking directly at Stuart, making Stuart avert his gaze.

Without delay," echoed Charlie. "Those are very good words, I think. Without delay. Please will you pay my bill without delay. Please leave without delay. Please improve your attitude without delay…" Mma Makutsi shot Charlie a

Love of what you do is unmistakable in the care with which you do it, whether it is seen in the way in which an artist applies the final touch of paint to his canvas, a master carpenter sands the last touch of roughness from the surface of the wood, or a woman making pasta kneads the compliant dough, draws it out, coaxes it to the right consistency.

Shrugging off this mortal coil?

He will be a small man inside, said Mma Ramotswe. He will feel small and unimportant. That is why he needs to put ladies down, Mma. Men who are big inside never feel the need to do that.

I'm just commenting on that sort of belief. The trouble is that it might make discussion difficult. If somebody believes so strongly in one particular solution to the world's problems, then it may obscure the nuances. That's all I was saying." Elspeth paused. "They may not see that there are others who have a different view. You can love things in a whole lot of different ways, can't you?

They were silent. It was not easy to see a solution to the problem of human need. It was easy to condemn those who stole, who poached wildlife, until you were asked what would you do if your only other option was starvation? That made it harder.

Barbara said to herself: Oh, please, please, please! Please let nothing go wrong with this—this wildly improbable, impossible, but gorgeous thing. She was not sure to whom to address this invocation. To Venus, perhaps? If the goddess of love were listening, she would surely cherish such an invocation and understand the urgency, the yearning, that lay behind it.

TEA IS ALWAYS THE SOLUTION

All over the world, I think, it is much the same. People want to escape places where there is war and poverty, and not enough water even. Or too much water. And they look at places where there is peace and good government and they think: Why can't I go there? They just want to work and have a roof over their heads and not wake up to the sound of bombs and gunfire. That's all they want.

All cats are grey in the dark, he had written in one chapter. So remember that how much you can see of a situation depends on how much light you can shine upon it.

We all have people in our lives we don't really choose as friends but with whom we're, well, lumbered, I suppose. Heart-sink friends.

The Germans had a word for everything—a word that could be very focused, very specific, because it could be constructed for a precise set of circumstances. They even had a word, it was said, for the feeling of envy experienced when one sees the tasty dishes ordered by others in a restaurant and it is too late to change one's own order. Mahlneid, meal envy, she believed that was the word—if it existed at all.

Indeed, it was so easy to make anybody happy. All that was required was a kind word or two—a kind word that cost nothing, and yet could have such a profound effect.

No, on the whole it was better to say kind things of late people, even if they did not fully deserve them. Kindness, after all, did not distinguish between those who merited it and those who did not. It was like rain, she thought. It fell everywhere and made everything green and new and alive once more. That is what it did.

And where does religion come into it? Are Protestant countries inherently less corrupt?" "No," she said. "I don't think it's that simple. The issue, I suppose, is whether a culture stresses telling the truth. That's the real point. It's not religion.

Use the last report," Anna suggested. "Simply delete 'efficiency' or whatever and insert 'restructuring.' That will save you a great deal of time." Ulf acknowledged the wisdom of this advice. "Restructuring" would go away, just as "efficiency" and "skills development" had gone away. But hoops had to be jumped through in order for this to happen, and Ulf would have to do that.

The real art in going through life with dignity and with a modicum of happiness was to accept what you were, and, at the same time, to accept others—and to love them all equally.

He had only recently learned the word dramaturge and had been looking for opportunities to use it. He had eventually summoned up the courage to try it on Big Lou, but her espresso machine had hissed at a crucial moment and she had not heard him.

Could you say that your business had expanded if it had gone from owning one teapot to two? Somehow

of the large numbers of people who applied for jobs, and she wondered how employers managed to select from such a wide field. Was everyone interviewed? And even if that happened, how did one distinguish one applicant from another when they all probably had roughly the same qualifications?