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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 0720f83 | None of us is immune to shipwreck. Come, beckons the fatal shore: come and die on my white sands, it said. And we do. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7389b6e | I'd like to be tidy, said Hen, I try, but I guess you can't be what you aren't. | tidy what-you-are | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| b16741b | It was easy, terribly easy, to become with time a middle-aged spinster with a sharp tongue. She would have to guard against this. | middle-age sharp-tongue spinster | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 7ccdb54 | It was always the best way of finding out information; just go and ask a woman who keeps her eyes and ears open and who likes to talk. It always worked. It was no use asking men; they simply were not interested enough in other people and the ordinary doings of people. That is why the real historians of Africa had always been the grandmothers, who remembered the lineage and the stories that went with it. | gossip historians storytelling | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 67b7021 | If we let the men talk about them and decide them, then suddenly we wake up and find out that the men have made all the decisions, and these decisions all suit men. | men | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| c71d2d3 | Boys and men are the same people, in different clothes. Boys wear short trousers and men wear long trousers. But they are just the same if you take their trousers off. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 9214da1 | Ako chovek, izchakvaiki v neshcho kato predverie momenta na svoeto razhdane, mozheshe da si izbere natsionalnostta, ne bi li bilo dosta izkusitelno da poiskash da se rodish kato italianets? | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 494b048 | It was a good place to sit, and listen, under a sky that had seen so much and heard so much that one more wicked deed would surely make no difference. Sins, thought Mma Ramotswe, are darker and more powerful when contemplated within confining walls. Out in the open, under such a sky as this, misdeeds were reduced to their natural proportions -- small, mean things that could be faced quite openly, sorted, and folded away. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| ca18450 | Antonia was very conscious of the corrosive power of envy and felt that it was this emotion, more than any other, which lay behind human unhappiness. People did not realise how widespread envy was. | envy unhappiness | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| c09a4e2 | Will you be my friend?" Bertie asked. And then added: "Just for Paris. You don't have to be my friend forever - just for Paris." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 661f47a | She had noticed that there was a tendency on the part of some Americans to believe that everybody, deep inside, wanted to live in America, and that it was inexplicable that people who could do so did not. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 1fd1411 | Absurdly, irrationally, she believed that music could make a difference to the temper of the world.She did not investigate this belief, test it to see whether it made sense;she simply believed it, and so she chose music that expressed order and healing:Bach for order, Mozart for healing. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 00cddc9 | Mma Makutsi pondered this. "Why are there fewer and fewer gentlemen, Mma Ramotswe?" "It is our fault, Mma. It is the fault of ladies." "Why is that?" "Because we have allowed men to stop behaving as gentlemen, and when you allow people to do what they wish, then that is what they do. They stop doing the things they need to do." She looked at Mma Makutsi across the steering wheel. "That is well known, I think, Mma. That is well known." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| da9fe00 | You may think this a strange story, but it is not. There are people whose lives are every bit as unusual as Bobby Box's--I can promise you that. Not all of them end as well, of course. For many people, the world is a place of sadness and sorrow, which is a great pity, as we have only one chance at life, and it is very bad luck if things do not go well. But even if you think they are not going well, you can still wish, as Bobby Box did. And .. | life | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 01e9922 | it must be odd to have no ambition, not to want something more. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 353c6f6 | Simple questions--and simple answers--were what we needed in life. That was what Mma Ramotswe believed. Yes. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 0f54c8c | Has anyone sen Mr Snark " "I saw him in the tunnel about 15 minutes ago." "Oh no " wailed Dr Ferman "he will have been atomised." "Oh dear" muttered an MP. "Bye-election." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 146706d | They should get another lawyer," he said. "Surely there are better people around. That man with the big nose--you know the one--they say that he's very good. The judges can't take their eyes off his nose, and so they always decide in his favour." | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 2f7243b | We want to reorganise the world, and that makes our brains jump the gun -sometimes. You look at a newspaper headline, take in one word, and before you know it your brain says: yes, that's what it says. But it may not. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 2220ae7 | It's how we read the face, said Ian. Remember that you're talking to a psychologist. We like to think about things like that. It's a question of numerous little signals that create the overall impression. But how do internal states who themselves physically? Very easily, said Ian. Think of anger. The knitted brow. Think of determination. The gritted teeth. And intelligence? Liveliness and engagement with the world. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 76399c5 | Words can make big things little, you know. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| f57db21 | When you allow people to do what they wish, then that is what they do. They stop doing the things they need to do. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| bf04592 | Perhaps one day she would find a place where she would stay. That would be good. To know that the place you were in was your own place--where you should be. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7a14f34 | But we all waste opportunities,' said Domenica. Every single one of us. Every young person does it. It's because we think we have so much time, and then, when we realise that our time is finite, it's too late. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 0707a23 | And then the second thing you have to do is go and see your son. That is a duty of love, Andrew. It's as simple as that. A duty of love. Do you understand what I'm saying to you? | witty | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 7dabf10 | She brought a chair into the room and placed it alongside the top of his bed. Then she held his hand as he drifted off to sleep. It was so small in her own hand, and it felt warm and dry. She pressed his hand gently, and his fingers returned the pressure, but only just, as he was almost asleep by then. She remembered, but not very well, what it was to fall asleep holding the hand of another; how precious such an experience, how fortunate th.. | friendship love parenting | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 8efdcc4 | He seemed genuinely astonished. "You admire me?" "Yes," she said gravely. "All of us do things we regret--that's part of being human. And sometimes, I think, moral quality reveals itself not so much in what we do, but in what we later say about what we have done...." -- | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| fb6b49e | You have each other, thought Isabel.But was that enough? Even when one was in love, it was not really enough just to have the other person - not if one needed stimulation. The company of just one person could be reassuring, could stave off loneliness, but would it be enough for three months? | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 67a950f | For a short while she considered the idea of orchestral courtesy. Certainly one should avoid giving political offence: German orchestras, of course, used to be careful about playing Wagner abroad, at least in some countries, choosing instead German composers who were somewhat more ... apologetic. | politics | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| cd01f8d | His sixth year, it seemed to him, had lasted a remarkably long time and there were points at which he frankly wondered whether he would ever turn seven. But now it was the night before his birthday, and barring some cosmic disaster, the advent of some unexpected black hole into which the earth might be sucked, with the attendant reversal or suspension of time, in very few hours he would be waking up to a world in which he was numbered among.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 338049d | That was what counted, she told herself: those unexpected moments of appreciation, unanticipated glimpses of beauty or kindness - any of the things that attached us to this world, that made us forget, even for a moment, its pain and its transience. | kindness life-and-living | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 9bf071c | The world, Mma Ramotswe believed, was composed of big things and small things. The big things were written large, and one could not but be aware of them--wars, oppression, the familiar theft by the rich and the strong of those simple things that the poor needed, those scraps which would make their life more bearable; this happened, and could make even the reading of a newspaper an exercise in sorrow. There were all those unkindnesses, palpa.. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 92cd8e5 | steamships insult the dignity of distance, | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| fd3767c | It was always a mistake, she thought, to dwell on the cause of one's anger. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 370788a | Everything, all those great things, had happened so far away--or so it seemed to [Mma Ramotswe] at the time. The world was made to sound as if it belonged to other people--to those who lived in distant countries that were so different from Botswana; that was before people had learned to assert that the world was theirs too, that what happened in Botswana was every bit as important, and valuable, as what happened anywhere else. | colonialism postcolonialism | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 1b9d881 | Doctors are allowed to tell us things which they might not do themselves. They know what the right thing is, but they may not be able to do it themselves. That does not mean that their advice is bad advice. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 86be9f4 | And food made with love, she thought, tasted better-everybody knew that. It just did. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7e340de | And she, Isabel, had gone along with this and all the time what was happening was she was becoming increasingly possessive of Jamie without ever having to acknowledge it. Now there was another woman, a girl really, and there was an obvious intimacy between them, which would exclude her as it would have to do, and that would be the end of everything. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 0e3ee4b | By the time Domenica arrived at the Gothic Revival sandstone building on Queen Street, she had put out of her mind all thought of Antonia's torrid affair - at least she assumed it was torrid, and anyway, she wondered if there was any point in having an affair which was not torrid. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| 7efe313 | Could you say that your business had expanded if it had gone from owning one teapot to two? Somehow she thought that Dr. Profit would answer both those questions with a shake of his head. Of course, she herself had expanded in girth since the agency was founded, but she did not think that such a form of growth was what the author of the article had in mind. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| aa4c9ff | If she was going to remain an engaged lady, then she would make the most of it, and one of the ways to do this would be to enjoy her free time. | marriage | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| b8d9571 | But we are all fortunate in one way or another. The task for most of us is to identify in what way that is, would you not agree? | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| c837529 | He took a deep breath. 'To marry me,' he said quietly. It was easier than he thought. Icarus did not fall from the sky; the ground did not open; the earth did not wobble on its trajectory. | Alexander McCall Smith | ||
| f07f742 | Perhaps her shoes would say something; Mma Makutsi had told her once, jokingly-- and she have been joking-- told her that her shoes occasionally gave her advice. Well, perhaps they could tell her not to be so bossy. They must have witnessed it after all-- shoes see everything; there are no secrets we can keep from our shoes. | Alexander McCall Smith |