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Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith Quotes

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Famous Alexander McCall Smith Quotes

“She had always understood that love could have an intense physical effect; could fill a space somewhere in the chest, could turn knees weak, could raise the pulse; could intoxicate, just as could a strong martini or a glass of champagne. Could, she thought, and would…but only if you allowed it, only if you opened whatever portals of the heart needed to be opened. And some people, of course, found it difficult to do that.”

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Book:At the Reunion Buffet
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“…did it make a difference if the remark never got back to the person about whom it was made? She thought not. The harm is done when the words are uttered: that is the act of belittlement, the act of diminishing the other, and it is that act which would cause pain to the victim. You said that about me? The wrong was located in the making of the cruel remark, rather than in the pain it might later cause.”

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Book:The Novel Habits of Happiness
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“…one of the coasts of a country that was a lifeboat, and that lifeboat was under siege by people who wanted to be taken on board. She thought to the southern shores of Italy and the boats that came up from the south, crammed with the desperate of North Africa striving to get into Europe. The vessels capsized under their human cargo; there were people in the water, their dream coming to a watery end. How could one turn one’s face against all of that? What sort of person would one have to be to sail past?”

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Book:The Novel Habits of Happiness
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“…She had been perfectly happy before she had met him; indeed she had been even slightly happier then. So the inscription might more accurately have read: “To remind you of how happy you’ve been in Edinburgh, in spite of the memories of me.” But people never wrote that sort of brutally honest thing in books, largely because people very rarely have a clear idea of the effect that they have on other people, or can bring themselves to admit it. And Bruce, as Sally had discovered, lacked both insight into himself and an understanding of how somebody like her might feel about somebody like him…”

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Book:Espresso Tales
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“He is a good, kind man,” said Mma Potokwane. “And such men are often too busy. I have noticed that round here too. That man I was talking to just then—one of our groundsmen—he is like that. He is so kind that everybody asks him to do everything. We had a bad-tempered man working here once and he had nothing to do because nobody, apart form myself, of course, had the courage to ask him to do anything.”

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Book:In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
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“She watched him take the trumpet from its case and fit the mouthpiece. She watched as he raised it to his lips and then, so suddenly, from that tiny cup of metal against his flesh, the sound would burst out like a glorious, brilliant knife dividing the air. And the little room would reverberate and the flies, jolted out of their torpor, would buzz round and round as if riding the swirling notes.”

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Book:The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
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“…like the Greeks, I suppose. They made a big thing of hoodwinking the Germans, until recently, of course. The Germans suddenly turned round and told the poor Greeks that the game was up. Oh dear. … I can just imagine the mythical parallel. There are all the Greek gods on Mount Olympus, or wherever they liked to cavort—cavorting away and having a great time on borrowed funds from those northern gods—Thor, Odin and so on—who of course inhabit northern forests and mountains. Anyway, the Greek gods have a great time and then Thor and Freya and so on get all sniffy and tell them that they have to cut the whole thing out and move down the mountain and get a job, or whatever. A terrible row ensues, with thunderbolts being hurled.”

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Book:The Revolving Door of Life
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“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. ... Mahlneid could well catch on because many are bound to have felt that sort of envy as the waiter carries the dishes of others, gorgeously tantalising, past their own table....”

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Book:The Department of Sensitive Crimes
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“You know the best example of sincerity? The absolute gold standard? Who? Angus pointed to the door, outside which Cyril was waiting patiently. A dog. Have you ever met an insincere dog - a dog who hides his true feelings? Domenica looked thoughtful. And cats? Dreadfully insincere, said Angus. Psychopaths- every one of them. Show me a cat, Domenica, and I'll show you a psychopath. Textbook examples.”

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Book:Bertie Plays the Blues
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“One woman said, 'I dreamed last night I was in a land where women were not the property of men. The men stayed at home and did all the hard work which women do; the cooking, the cleaning, the watching of children - men did all that. Women ruled the land in my dream, and they did not spend their time raiding other people's cattle or destroying their houses. They ruled gently, like women.' The other women looked at each other in astonishment. They had all had strange dreams, but none had dreamed of so wondrous a thing as that.”

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Book:Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams
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“And now," said the Duke, there's something very unpleasant on the loose. We may pretend that it isn't; we may deny it, but we know that there are more and more people who hate those whom they used not to hate. And there are even some who encourage the hate, who harbour that hate within themselves and are happy to see it flourish in the breasts of others." ... "I sometimes wonder," said the Duke, "whether this isn't because we started to dismantle nations. Nations gave people a sense of common identity and encouraged concern for others - because of the community implicit in the idea of the nation. We started to chip away at that in the name of a wider, transcendent identity but... but perhaps that hasn't worked and as a result, we've been cast adrift, our previous links and binds dissolved or discredited, suspicious of one another, ready to distrust our neighbours.”

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Author:Alexander McCall Smith
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