Alexander McCall Smith Quotes

IdleHearts / Quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

Enjoy the best inspirational, motivational, positive, funny and famous quotes by Alexander McCall Smith. Use words and picture quotations to push forward and inspire you keep going in life!

Image, What I really like investigating in my novels: what is it that

Picture Quotes

What I really like investigating in my novels: what is it that makes an intimate society, that makes a society in which moral concern for others will be possible? Part of that I think are manners and ritual. We tried to get rid of manners, we tried to abolish manners in the '60s. Manners were very, very old-fashioned and un-cool. And of course we didn't realise that manners are the building blocks of proper moral relationships between people.

—Alexander McCall Smith

Picture Quotes

It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.

—Alexander McCall Smith

Image, And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice –

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And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice - based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudices and muddled folk wisdom - how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right!

—Alexander McCall Smith

Picture Quotes

I'm interested in character and dialogue and exchange of ideas.

—Alexander McCall Smith

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Picture Quotes

At night we are all strangers, even to ourselves.

—Alexander McCall Smith

Image, Every novel presents a slice of life. A noir policier for example

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Every novel presents a slice of life. A noir policier for example presents one slice, one that perhaps addresses social dysfunction or some sort of pathology, while mine present a slice that is more upbeat and affirmative.

—Alexander McCall Smith

Image, The good were worthy of note because they battled and that battle

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The good were worthy of note because they battled and that battle was a great story, whereas the evil were evil because of moral laziness, or weakness, and that was ultimately a dull and uninteresting affair.

—Alexander McCall Smith

Image, International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small,

Picture Quotes

International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.

—Alexander McCall Smith

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Picture Quotes

A very powerful theme in fiction is that of loss.

—Alexander McCall Smith

Picture Quotes

She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.

—Alexander McCall Smith

Image, When we love others, we naturally want to talk about them, we

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When we love others, we naturally want to talk about them, we want to show them off, like emotional trophies. We invest them with a power to do to others what they do to us; a vain hope, as the lovers of others are rarely of much interest to us. But we listen in patience, as friends must, and as Isabel now did, refraining from comment, other than to encourage the release of the story and the attendant confession of human frailty and hope.

—Alexander McCall Smith

Image, There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are

Picture Quotes

There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.

—Alexander McCall Smith

Image, Be content with who you are and where you are, and do

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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.

—Alexander McCall Smith

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Image, Any extreme political creed brought only darkness in the long run; it

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Any extreme political creed brought only darkness in the long run; it lit up nothing. The best politics were those of caution, tolerance and moderation, Angus maintained, but such politics were, alas, also very dull, and certainly moved nobody to poetry.

—Alexander McCall Smith

Image, As a writer I’ve learned certain lessons. One of them is to

Picture Quotes

As a writer I've learned certain lessons. One of them is to be careful about how you put a view, and to bear in mind how easily and readily you'll be misinterpreted.